Today I read Doctrine and Covenants section 70. It is another section about stewardship and about the law of consecration of taking care of the temporal needs of the saints. As I read this I got to thinking about stewardship and a question occurred to me. Why does the Lord have us assist in stewardship anyway?
What is the purpose of us being entrusted to help out with the Lord in His mighty work of saving souls? He could obviously do a much better job of it than we could and would be 10 times more efficient at it. For an answer I think of an earthly parent. I was speaking to my parents a few months ago and they made the strangest statement, at the time. They said that when my siblings and I were growing up it was a lot of work for them to give us chores to do. Now, at the time I thought that was a really strange thing to say, after all with 6 kids my parents could easily ration out the household chores and hardly have anything to do themselves if they so chose.
But then I got to thinking about my childhood and teen years. When I did my chores they had to go behind me and inspect my work to make sure I got it done right. In the case of my older brothers, my parents had to argue and fight with them to even do the chore and suddenly my parents answer made a lot more sense. It was more work for them to give us the work to do, and make sure it was done right, because we obviously didn't want to do it. And being children we did our best to get out of it and we whined and complained and acted as if we were being tortured and I'm sure gave our parents lots of enjoyment.
But they knew the value of teaching us to work, and I am SO glad they stuck with it now that I am an adult. They knew that it was a sacrifice on their part to have the house the way they wanted it and as clean as they wanted it in order to teach us the value of work. It's a sacrifice lots of parents don't make these days under the severe misnomer of love. Parents are so confused and have bought into the garbage and lies that the world perpetrates of what love is these days that they think by "sparing" their children such tasks they are proving how much they love their children. Nothing could be further from the truth. Heavenly Father knows how to show genuine love for His children. He knows that if you love your children, you teach them.
Just with my, and probably all of yours too, parents Heavenly Father knows that if He has us help and do what He needs us to do we will grow. I love to ask Latter-day Saints what the purpose of life is. I get such varied results. Some say it's a test, some say a chance to get a body. Some say a chance to choose God or half a dozen other responses. It's rare that someone says we are here to grow. But it is just as much a true response as all the others people give me. A really big part of this life is to learn to overcome our weakness and to learn to be more like our Heavenly Father. Our goal is to one day be like He is and we can only do that if we do the things He does.
We are allowed to participate in the work of our Heavenly Father because He wants us to know what it is like so we can make a choice of what we want. Heavenly Father knows His is the only way to true and lasting happiness, but He is not going to force it on anyone. I know for a fact He could do it all SO much better than we can. I know He could do it faster and perhaps He even laughs at our attempts, but He knows that we will never learn if He does it all for us. Good parents know this too. So we are given small bits and pieces to work with at first. We are given stewardship over a few things to prove ourselves and see how we will conduct ourselves. As we prove ourselves worthy of His trust we are slowly given more responsibility, just like at a job. The difference is the reward for doing a good job with God is much better and desirable than any earthly job, I promise. Until tomorrow.
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