Good Timber

As I've gotten older and especially as a missionary, I've come to find out more about how hard life can be.  I hear all the time (in various forms) the question,  "If God really loved me, why would He let this happen?"
I'm going to trust an apostle of the Lord to answered that one for you:

"How can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, 'Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then, let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy Joy!' "

-Neal A. Maxwell 

It is because of the love our Savior has for us and the sacrifice He made that we can take these experiences we have been given and turn them into opportunities of growth.  If we choose to use His Atonement, we truly can become more like Him.  What an amazing gift!  We have the chance to actually become like Jesus Christ!  He really will let us "come and dwell with Him and fully share His joy" IF we take that chance and turn our times of trial into times of change.


A few other missionaries have this poem on their walls and I really love how it encompasses the truth that hardship IS because God loves us and wants to help make us strong.  

GOOD TIMBER

By Douglas Malloch

The tree that never had to fight

For sun and sky and air and light,

But stood out in the open plain

And always got its share of rain,

Never became a forest king

But lived and died a scrubby thing.

The man who never had to toil

To gain and farm his patch of soil,

Who never had to win his share

Of sun and sky and light and air,

Never became a manly man

But lived and died as he began.

Good timber does not grow with ease:

The stronger wind, the stronger trees;

The further sky, the greater length;

The more the storm, the more the strength.

By sun and cold, by rain and snow,

In trees and men good timbers grow.

Where thickest lies the forest growth,

We find the patriarchs of both.

And they hold counsel with the stars

Whose broken branches show the scars

Of many winds and much of strife.

This is the common law of life.

I just want to share my own testimony that I know that God loves us.  He never does anything that isn't for our own good. I love Him and I thank Him for, as this mormon message says, "loving me enough to hurt me."