They Are All Good In Their Places

Meme (above) and comments (to the dividing line) are as originally posted on Facebook Page, Awaken To Our Awful Situation:

All this talk about equality, sameness, and the nation now using a gov’t promoted curriculum with the word “common” in its description… this idea of sameness for everyone is not supported by scripture and actually goes against the gospel plan and what we know and understand about our premortal experience. – moderator, Heather Jackson

“The spirits of men had their free agency, some were greater than others, and from among them the Father called and foreordained his prophets and rulers…. The spirits of men were not equal. They may have had an equal start, and we know they were all innocent in the beginning; but the right of free agency which was given to them enabled some to outstrip others, and thus, through the eons of immortal existence, to become more intelligent, more faithful, for they were free to act for themselves, to think for themselves, to receive the truth or rebel against it.” Joseph Fielding Smith Jr, Doctrines of Salvation, 1:59

“Between the extremes of the “noble and the great” spirits, whom God would make His rulers (see Abraham 3:22-23), and the disobedient and the rebellious, who were cast out with Satan, there were obviously many spirits with varying degrees of faithfulness. May we not assume from these teachings that the progress and development we made as spirits have brought privileges and blessings here according to our faithfulness in the spirit world? Now don’t be too hasty in your conclusions as to what conditions in mortality constitute the greater privileges. That condition in life which gives the greatest experience and opportunity for development is the one to be most desired and any one so privileged is most favored of God… Now, don’t misunderstand as to just what may be a great privilege or opportunity.  Sometimes to be born through the channels of adversity is to have had the greatest opportunity. Just because we haven’t been born rich, for instance, may be the greatest blessing we could possibly have. Perhaps some physical infirmities might be a blessing.” Harold B. Lee,  from The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, p. 23

“Mary was visiting with a friend who had a greenhouse. As she looked at her friend’s flowers, she noticed a beautiful golden chrysanthemum but was puzzled that it was growing in a dented, old, rusty bucket. Her friend explained, ‘I ran short of pots, and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting in this old pail. It’s just for a little while, until I can put it out in the garden. ‘” – Thomas S. Monson, Charity Never Faileth, Oct 2010 General Conference

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True that ! (D&C 130:18-21) To advance the true principle outlined above,  I, Katie Moore, add the following account, related by Brigham Young to the Latter-day Saints, of a comforting dream he was given. I love it because I also find it both comforting and reassuring:

 

“After much thought and reflection, and a good deal of praying and anxiety as to whether the people would be saved after all our trouble in being driven into the wilderness, I had a dream one night, the second year after we came in here. Captain Brown had gone up to the Weber, and bought a little place belonging to Miles Goodyear. Miles Goodyear had a few goats, and I had a few sheep that I had driven into the Valley, and I wanted to get a few goats to put along with the sheep. I had seen Captain Brown and spoken to him about the goats, and he said I could have them. Just at that time I had this dream, which I will now relate. I thought I had started and gone past the Hot Springs, which is about four miles north of this city. I was going after my goats. When I had gone round the point of the mountain by the Hot Springs, and had got about half a mile on the rise of ground beyond the Spring, whom should I meet but brother Joseph Smith. He had a wagon with no bed on, with bottom boards, and tents and camp equipage piled on. Somebody sat on the wagon driving the team. Behind the team I saw a great flock of sheep. I heard their bleating, and saw some goats among them. I looked at them and thought —“This is curious, brother Joseph has been up to Captain Brown’s and got my goats.”

There were men driving the sheep, and some of the sheep I should think were three and a half feet high, with large, fine, beautiful white fleeces, and they looked so lovely and pure; others were of moderate size, and pure and white; and in fact there were sheep of all sizes, with fleeces clean, pure and white. Then I saw some that were dark and spotted, of all colors and sizes and kinds, and their fleeces were dirty, and they looked inferior; some of these were a pretty good size, but not as large as some of the large fine clean sheep, and altogether there was a multitude of them of all sizes and kinds, and goats of all colors, sizes and kinds mixed among them. Joseph stopped the wagon, and the sheep kept rushing up until there was an immense herd.

I looked in Joseph’s eye, and laughed, just as I had many a time when he was alive, about some trifling thing or other, and said I—“Joseph, you have got the darndest flock of sheep I ever saw in my life; what are you going to do with them, what on earth are they for?” Joseph looked cunningly out of his eyes, just as he used to at times, and said he—“They are all good in their places.”

– Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses 18:244b

 

‘The Lord wants those few [bad cattle] here [among the Saints] to fulfil His words and purposes, and they are fit for no other place. The sheep and the goats, the calves and the pigs, are all good in their places. The Lord will make use of us to His glory; and though a good many of those who now profess to be good Latter-day Saints may meet condemnation, even their course will finally result to the glory of God. Are these ideas correct? Judge ye.”

-Brigham Young

 

EZEKIEL 34
11 ¶ For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out.

12 As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.

13 And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country.

14 I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they liein a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel.

15 I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God.

16 I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick: but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment.

17 And as for you, O my flock, thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the he goats.

18 Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet?

19 And as for my flock, they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet; and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet.

20 ¶ Therefore thus saith the Lord God unto them; Behold, I, even I, will judge between the fat cattle and between the lean cattle.

21 Because ye have thrust with side and with shoulder, and pushed all the diseased with your horns, till ye have scattered them abroad;

22 Therefore will I save my flock, and they shall no more be a prey; and I will judge between cattle and cattle.

23 And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd.

24 And I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I the Lord have spoken it.

25 And I will make with them a covenant of peace, and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land: and they shall dwell safely in the wilderness, and sleep in the woods.

26 And I will make them and the places round about my hill a blessing; and I will cause the shower to come down in his season; there shall be showers of blessing.

27 And the tree of the field shall yield her fruit, and the earth shall yield her increase, and they shall be safe in their land, and shall know that I am the Lord, when I have broken the bands of their yoke, and delivered them out of the hand of those that served themselves of them.

28 And they shall no more be a prey to the heathen, neither shall the beast of the land devour them; but they shall dwell safely, and none shall make them afraid.

29 And I will raise up for them a plant of renown, and they shall be no more consumed with hunger in the land, neither bear the shame of the heathen any more.

30 Thus shall they know that I the Lord their God am with them, and that they, even the house of Israel, are my people, saith the Lord God.

31 And ye my flock, the flock of my pasture, are men, and I am your God, saith the Lord God.

 From a talk from Carlfred Broderick:

I had a woman who came to me who was…  the victim of a terrible family …  [She] had been abused in about every way there was to be abused—psychologically, physically, sexually. Besides that she had to do all the housework.

In high school she met a young man who was a Latter-day Saint and who started taking her to church with him. Eventually they married. He was gentle and kind and patient because she didn’t come with very many positive attitudes toward men, marital intimacy, or many other things. But he was long-suffering and patient and loved her. They raised some boys.

Despite this, she had recurring bouts of depression and very negative feelings about herself because she had been taught by the people most important in her early life what a rotten person she was. One day she said to me, “You’re a stake president; you explain to me the justice of it.” She said, “I go to church, and I can hardly stand it. When I see little girls being hugged and kissed and taken to church and appropriately loved by their fathers and mothers, I just have to get up and leave. I say, ‘Heavenly Father, what was so terrible about me that, when I was that age, I didn’t get any of that? What did that little girl do in the pre-mortal existence that I didn’t do so she is loved, so she is safe? Her daddy gives her priesthood blessings when she’s sick. Her mother loves her and supports her and teaches her. What did I do?’ Can you tell me that God is just if he sends that little girl to that family and me to my family?” She said, “It’s a good thing I had boys. I don’t think I could have stood to raise girls and have their father love them because I’m so envious.”

I would not have known how to answer her in my own capacity because that is manifestly unjust. Where here or in eternity is the justice in an innocent child’s suffering in that way? But the Lord inspired me to tell her, and I believe with all my heart that it applies to many in the kingdom, that she was a valiant, Christlike spirit who volunteered to come to earth and suffer innocently to purify a lineage. She had volunteered to absorb the poisoning of sin, anger, anguish, and violence, to take it into herself and not to pass it on; to purify a lineage so that downstream from her it ran pure and clean, full of love and the Spirit of the Lord and self-worth. I believed truly that her calling was to be a savior on Mount Zion: that is, to be Savior-like, like the Savior to suffer innocently that others might not suffer. She voluntarily took such a task with the promise she would not be left alone and abandoned, but he would send one to take her by the hand and be her companion out into the light. I viewed that woman in a different way also, again realizing I was in the presence of one of the great ones and unworthy to have my hands on her head.

Source: My Parents Married on a Dare and Other Favorite Essays on Life [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1996]

 

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