Happy Thanksgiving

Today being Thanksgiving, I just want to say I am thankful for all the adversity I have had to deal with in my life.  After all, the hardships and troubles we work through in life are what make us who we are.  I love the title of Cheri Dew's book, If Life Were Easy It Wouldn't Be Hard.  It is necessary for life to be hard.

To understand this concept we must understand that we have a loving Heavenly Father and we lived with him (and, I am sure, a loving mother) before we came to Earth.  When we were in our pre-mortal life a great council was called.  Our Father presented His plan for us to come to Earth to gain physical bodies (for we were spiritual beings then), and to be tested.  We would grow and gain strength from this experience.  Knowing we would have problems and make mistakes,  Father would provide a Savior for us to atone for our mistakes.  Our older brother Lucifer countered with a plan of his own.  In this plan we would all be forced to do what is right and none of the spirits that were there would be lost.  This plan sounded good to a third of the spirits and they chose to follow Lucifer.  The rest of us realized that we would not grow or improve under this plan.  We needed to have what we call agency, or the right to choose right from wrong.  We knew there were risks and some would be lost, but this was the only way we would grow and become strong.  By the way, a Savior was provided.  Our oldest brother volunteered to do this for all of us, because of the love he has for all of us.  He became Jesus Christ.

I also want to say how thankful I am for the gift of agency.  This is Heavenly Fathers gift to us to help us learn to control the physical body he also gave us.  But most of all I am thankful for the gift of His first-born Son,  Jesus Christ, who provided a way for us to return to the beautiful world of our loving Father.

I just wanted to express some of this because it is the day to express our thanks for things that are important to us.  I also will use this as a way to introduce the concept of agency.  This is really why we must suffer some for other people's choices and sometimes our choices may cause others to suffer.  Stay tuned as I discuss this very important concept in future posts.