Fate and Destiny

A good friend recently wrote about fate and destiny. Do we understand the implications of the teachings?

Why are we in places at certain times? Is there a reason we are impelled to turn right and not go straight? Do we understand there is a loving God that knows all who can steer us away from dangers?

This morning I was taking the back routs to work because I saw some free furniture yesterday. I wanted to make sure it was still there before my mom went over with Ogden to pick it up. I haven't ever seen a sheriff on that road and that is why I like to go that way. I was zipping along and this "stupid bird" flew out in front of me causing me to slow down. Not 100 yds later, there was a sheriff off to the side of the road. Did that bird have a purpose in that moment?

I hardly ever take the back roads home, but yesterday I chose to and saw a free couch. Is there a reason I was directed that way? Or in talking to some people, one sold me their practically new dryer for $100 and another told me I could have their mildly used washer. Did God put me in their path at that time for a reason?

This morning I have been listening to a talk by Elder Neil A. Maxwell called "But for a small moment." He said so beautifully,

"God knows even know what the future holds for each of us...

"If God chooses to teach us the things we most need to learn because he loves us, and if he seeks to tame our souls and gentle us in the way we most need to be tamed and most need to be gentled, it follows that he will customize the challenges he gives us and individualize them so that we will be prepared for life in a better world by his refusal to take us out of this world, even though we are not of it. In the eternal ecology of things we must pray, therefore, not that things be taken from us, but that God's will be accomplished through us. What, therefore, may seem now to be mere unconnected pieces of tile will someday, when we look back, take form and pattern, and we will realize that God was making a mosaic. For there is in each of our lives this kind of divine design, this pattern, this purpose that is in the process of becoming, which is continually before the Lord but which for us, looking forward, is sometimes perplexing...

"Jonah, you recall, had been called to go to Nineveh. He didn't want to go to that urban center that was so big. We are told it took the people hours to walk across that city. He tried to find a ship going to Tarshish. He "paid the fare thereof," hoping to leave the presence of the Lord. You and I will one day know, if we do not know now, there is no way we can escape from God's love, because it is infinite. However many times in our lives we might rather go to a Tarshish than a Nineveh, he will insist that we go to Nineveh, and we must pay "the fare thereof"...

There are many times in our lives when we want to go to Tarshish and not to Nineveh. But when we make the decision to be obedient, even though we don't know why, there are blessings awaiting us. The Neneveh's of our lives may seem bigger than we are. But we are sent there to face them for a reason. When we chose to be disobedient, Elder Maxwell said, "Most of our suffering, brothers and sisters, actually comes because of our sins and not because of our nobility."

Not all of our trials come because of who we are. Many of them are brought on by our own disobedience. So, what kind of trials will you chose to have? Will you have the kind that are brought on by fate? Or those that come through destiny?

"Some of us will have to be most courageous, not when we're alone, but when we're in a crowd. Whatever the form the test takes, we must be willing to pass it. We must reach breaking points without breaking. We must be willing, if necessary, to give up our lives--not because we have a disdain for life as some do, but even though we love life--because we are the servants of him who did that in such an infinite way for all of us."