M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Where Are the Blessings?
by Steven D. Harrop

I would like to address a question which has existed and which continues to exist in the minds of many members of the Church. Perhaps this question has troubled many of you from time to time. I know that it has troubled me. The failure of many of our members to resolve this in their own minds has sometimes resulted in their falling away from the Church. It is therefore a very serious question which deserves very careful consideration.

Perhaps we can pose this question best by referring to several real life situations. These are not hypothetical examples, but actual events with which I am personally familiar.

One. A strong and faithful member of the Church who is serving on the Stake High Council at the time, and who has always paid a full tithing and generous fast offering, who has sent two sons on missions, finds his business crumbling. Economic recession is taking a heavy toll. He locates an investor willing to invest additional badly-needed capital, only to have that investor killed in a freak airplane accident the very day the investment is to take place. The business is forced into bankruptcy. Where were the blessings promised this member if he would give of his time and means to the Church?

Two. A bishop, who comes from a strong Church family with generations of faithfulness in the gospel, is raising five beautiful children ages 6 through 14, is enjoying a prosperous professional practice; when he discovers that he has cancer in very advanced stages. He has always lived the Word of Wisdom, yet despite a number of blessings, he dies in pain five months later, leaving his family alone. Where were the blessings of health and strength promised this member if he would live the Word of Wisdom?

Three. A stake president and his wife raise three children-faithfully holding family home evenings, taking time as often as possible to do things with his family. They see that they attend their meetings and do their best to raise them under the good influence of the Church. As each child reaches his middle teens, each turns away from the Church and the family. Morality is lost; they begin using drugs; one ends up in prison after a serious crime. Today, none are active-none are close to their parents. Where were the blessings of a unified family promised these members who hold family home evening and who do all within their power to encourage their children in the gospel?

Four: A mission president is called away from a multimillion dollar business to preside over one of the missions of the Church. In his absence, his business collapses; he loses everything. Upon his return, this once millionaire hasn't enough resources left to own a home. He and his wife move into a small apartment. He is 62 years old. Where were the blessings that his affairs would be attended to if this member would serve the Lord?

And I could go on with numerous examples, and I suspect that many of you could point out examples of individuals who were faithful in the gospel, who were deserving of life's richest blessings, who by all appearances were deprived of those blessings. Perhaps such events have happened in your own life. If not, they undoubtedly will at some time. Even more troubling is when such events happen in the lives of our loved ones. One of the examples I have given you is my own father. At times, we simply do not enjoy the blessings we feel we've earned by our obedience to a given principle of the gospel. At such times the question may be asked, "Where are my blessings?

Certainly we have all received great blessings from time to time-for which we should be thankful. But it's not of these times that I would speak. I'm talking about those times when the desired blessing fails to come, when we feel let down, when we are forced to ask: Where is my blessing?

This question has been asked before by individuals who did not receive the blessing they thought they needed or perhaps deserved. Joseph Smith asked this question as recorded in the Doctrine & Covenants. Thrown into the Liberty Jail in the dead of winter, starved and mistreated, his followers driven and killed by mobs, he may have thought: Didn't I do what was asked of me?

Is this the reward for my obedience?

"O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place? How long shall thy hand be stayed, and thine eye...behold from the eternal heavens the wrongs of thy people...and thine ear be penetrated with their cries? Yea, O Lord, how long shall they suffer these wrongs...before thine heart shall be softened toward them...? (D&C 121:1-3)

Surely Joseph Smith was deserving of the blessings he sought; yet in his lifetime he never received those blessings. Why not?

In order to understand the answer to this question, we have to take one big step backwards. We have to look at a much broader picture than the single problem or tribulation which has confronted us. No matter how big the problem, we have to see past it; we have to view it in its proper perspective. I know that's sometimes very difficult to do. Yet if we don't, if we allow that problem to blind us to everything else, then we will never know the answer. We may fall away from the Church. We may feel that the Lord has let us down.

So step back with me. Think of your pre-existence, your current mortal existence, and your life hereafter. You know, based on the Lord's system of reckoning time given to us in the Pearl of Great Price (Abraham 3:40) that one day to God is the same as one thousand years to us, and therefore our lives here on earth comprise less than an hour and a half. Ninety minutes of the Lord's time is all we spend in mortality. Not very long, is it? Have you stepped back far enough?

If you have, then answer this question: Why did you come to this earth? There are two basic reasons for our mortal experience: 1) To obtain a body, and 2) to prove ourselves worthy of eternal life. In Moses (l:39) we read: "For behold, this is my work and m glory-to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man."

Immortality is life without death. This is made possible through the resurrection, when our bodies and our spirits will be re-united, never again to be separated. We came to this earth to get a body, the resurrection insures us of that body, and fulfills the first of our reasons for coming to this earth.

Eternal life is something different. Eternal life is life with God in the Celestial Kingdom. It is a life dedicated to becoming more and more like Heavenly Father to the extent that we eventually become like him. It I had to summarize what eternal life meant in a single word, I would call it character-the development of a God-character.

If the resurrection gives us our bodies and immortality, what gives us eternal life? It is the atonement-Christ's gift to us that we may become like him. Obtaining eternal life is dependent upon that which we've become and that which we are. This concept is key to our question: Where are the blessings?

Is our step back helping to focus things a bit? If it is, then answer this question: When our 90 minutes or so are up, and we leave this life, what will we take with us? What will we still have when all this is over? 1) We will have our body, since we will all be resurrected, and 2) we will have what we have learned, that degree of progression that we have achieved; our hopefully improved character. These two things motivated us to come us to this earth in the first place, didn't they? And they're the only two things we'll still have when our 90 minutes are over. Everything else will be gone. We won't even have our families unless we have traveled far enough down that road of personal progression to be worthy of them.

Now we don't have to worry too much about keeping our body-that we will have in the resurrection. Our character-that we have to worry about, that we are still building with the help of our Savior.

Now that you are standing back far enough to see the whole picture, what is the greatest blessing God could give you? Look at our life from his time frame. Seeing just how short mortality really is, do you think his primary concern is to bless you with a prosperous and growing career that would make you successful and wealthy throughout your mortal life? Would his greatest blessing to you be health and strength throughout your 90 minutes? Would it even be loyal children who never varied from the gospel or their parents? I submit that the greatest blessing your Father in Heaven could offer you is the opportunity to achieve the character that he has. After all, isn't that the reason you are here?

Have you ever wondered why the best people sometimes seem to have the greatest trials in this life? It's as if being righteous only makes them eligible to be tried. It does not remove their tribulations. Why did the Lord permit Satan to run rampant over Job? Why was Abraham told to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice/ Why was Joseph Smith beaten, driven, and eventually killed? Why was even the only begotten-Jesus Christ, forced to endure the worst pain and suffering imaginable. Why are you and your loved ones so often faced with trials and tribulations?

In our limited mortal perspective, these sure don't seem like blessings, do they? We think the righteous should receive better than this. Yet, when we take that big step backwards, when we look beyond our 90 minutes in mortal life and see the eternal perspective, when we realize that the only thing that really matters in this life is the development of our character, then it becomes clear that God is not cursing or neglecting these righteous individuals. He is blessing them by permitting their problems and tribulations, and he is exalting them along the pathway of eternal progression as they endure and overcome their problems. He is refining in their character qualities of steadfastness, patience, self-control, endurance, wisdom, and other attributes-which simply cannot be obtained in any other way.

I think that most of us, in the back of our minds perhaps, carry an intuition that tells us that such trials are sometimes good. We frown on those who have always had life easy-the person born with the silver spoon in his mouth-the heir who inherits too much and seems to work too little. We exalt the struggler, the widow who has had things hard, those who have endured much in accomplishing what they are.

We send out missionaries, whom we love very much, knowing full well that their mission will be the hardest period in their lives to date-filled with tribulations. But knowing also that therein is an opportunity to return a much better person than when they left. Do you think God loves you any less than we love those missionaries? He has sent each of us on a mortal mission-filled with tribulations. But knowing also that therein is an opportunity to return a much better person than when they left. Do you think God loves you any less than we love those missionaries? He has sent each of us on a mortal mission-filled with trials, knowing that therein is an opportunity for us to return to him a much better person. It is our character that God is concerned with and which we should be concerned with-not how easy our life is made from mortally significant but immortally insignificant blessings.

Those who have faced trials and who have endured are blessed by the Christ-like character which they have developed. They are blessed far more richly than those who have not endured such tribulations, who face a seemingly easy life with few such problems, and whose characters languish as a result. While we may envy the latter person whose life is easy, when each soul's 90 minutes are up, and we go before our God with nothing but our resurrected body and our character, which person do you suppose is going to count himself most blessed?

Listen to the Lord's answer to the supplication of Joseph Smith in the Liberty Jail: "My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thing afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high;...if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good" (D&C 121:7-8, 122:5-8).

All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good!

As Joseph Smith's tribulations gave him experience, so were Job, Abraham, and Joseph of Egypt blessed with tribulations which gave them experience-the experience necessary to build their characters, to progress toward becoming more like Christ.

If you have not faced such trials, then perhaps you should be concerned. Is it because the Lord doesn't think you'll endure them, that you have been deprived of some of these kinds of character-building problems? I'm sure that each one of us will be given many opportunities throughout our 90 minutes on this earth to face trials-at times, serious trials. When those times come, and they will for each of us, and it seems that the Lord has forsaken us, and we cry out: Where art thou Lord? Where is my blessing? I hope that we will be able to take that big step backwards to see past that problem, to view that trial in its eternal perspective.

Tired-and lonely,

So tired the heart aches.

Meltwater trickles down the rocks,

The fingers are numb, the knees tremble.

It is now, not that you must not give in.

On the path of others are resting places,

Places in the sun where they can meet

But this is your path

And it is now, now that you must not fail.

Weep, Weep if you can,

But do not complain.

The way chose you

And you must be thankful.

At that moment when our trials seem the hardest, is the moment of our greatest blessing. Like a missionary sent into the field, like fine steel suddenly thrust into the fiery furnace; that moment is when we can develop our character to a greater extent than we ever could in a thousand years of our paradisiacal pre-mortal existence. That moment is when we can prove ourselves worthy of eternal life.

Let us never forget why we're here on this earth. Let us think upon things eternal-and let this eternal perspective determine our life. It is a very common habit to blame our environment for our life, to be a victim to those things that happen to us. Environment modifies life, but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings. Your soul must be made stronger than its surroundings!

About the Author
Steven D. Harrop has been a portfolio manager for Strong Capital Management and now teaches investment strategies at Southern Utah University.

Click here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.