Burning Questions

Description

Burning Questions

This story is for those of you who have questions that are just burning you up. You have to have an answer.

I was young and, in those days, always in a hurry. One day I was driving a truck and hauling a load to a nearby town. As I was driving along a busy county road, I noticed something not right with the load. I pulled over to the shoulder, ran around to the passenger side, and fixed the problem. I turned and started back toward the cab. I ran across the front of the truck, not even thinking what I was doing. Just as I was about to run out into the street, a truck roared past, right next to mine. I skidded to a stop, just in time. One more step, just one more step, and I would not be here telling this story. By the fortune of a split second, I lived.

I’ve thought about that event many times, and wondered why I was spared when others, so much better, were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and through no fault of their own were taken. Why did I live and they not? I don’t know. I’m not sure in this life I will ever know.

How many times have you heard this anguished cry, “I’ve been good; why did this happen? Why me? Why did he die? Why was my child born this way? Why this freak accident? Why such a devastating natural disaster and in such a place? Did God do this or just allow this, or was He even there at all?

God is there, and the most important questions, those upon which our salvation depends, those can and do get answered. The rest can wait until we are ready.

To some of our questions, I’m not sure we could understand even if he did tell us. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.”

Every time I have said I was going to stay on my knees until I got an answer, my knees gave in before God did. Maybe I didn’t have enough faith or maybe God knew better. I am convinced that some questions are just going to have to wait. After all, mortality is more about faith than answers.

I said wait, because if we are patient and faithful, every answer will eventually come and we too will be constrained to exclaim “Holy, holy are thy judgments, O, Lord God Almighty.” In other words, He knew best all along.

Sources: Isaiah 55:7 and 2 Nephi 9:46