Week #59: Dios lo permite, por el amor que tiene para nosotros
Hola gente! Hope everyone is doing good and enjoying the start of a new football season! I'd be lying if I didn't say I miss it a ton haha...but either way, I'm loving my life here just fine. This week was really good. The wheather is starting to get a little hot and super humid again already. Getting to that time of year again where we just suffer outside and get burned to death hahaha.
This week my house mate, Elder Ross, and I, sang the national anthem for our two latino companions on September 11. They had heard the jist of what happened on 9/11, but didn't know too much, so we got to explain everything that happened. I think remembering 9/11 this year was a little more impactful for me than normal. While thinking about how close to 3 thousand people died that day, we contacted a woman outside of her house and began to chat with her. She quickly got very angry and was shouting about how God didn't exist and then calmed down and explained to us that as a 4 year old, she was sexually abused by her father and had a horrible up-bringing. She said she had never once been happy in her life for all the trials shes faced. She asked us many times, "Where was God in that moment?" We tried to explain to her why God doesn't interfere in those moments, and why bad things happen to good people, even children, at times, but she didn't want to accept our answers.
She simply was angry and confused with God, rather than not actually believing in Him. After a nice conversation of 15 minutes or so, we realized there was no way of giving her an answer that would suffice. She left us with the comment, "Until God comes down and stands before me and tells me that He exists, and is all powerful, I will not believe in Him" We left her with the wise invitation to begin believing in Him before she stands before Him. But after this experience with this woman, and also the remembrance of 9/11, I thought of a scripture that has had a big impact on me.
"For the Lord suffereth the righteous to be slain that His justice and judgement may come upon the wicked; Therefore ye need not suppose that the righteous are lost, but behold, they do enter into the rest of the Lord their God." Alma 60:13.
What happened to this woman as a child, and what happened to the people in the Twin Towers was injust, and the people had no control over what happened to them. God loves us so much that He will never interfere with our agency. Even if it means a horrible outcome for an innocent person, He knows that this life is temporary, and that we will all return to live with Him. We will all stand before Him at the last judgement to give count of what we've accomplished with the free agency that He has given us, and He will give unto us a perfect judgement. I know these things to be true, and I would invite everyone to know for themselves, that God really is all-powerful, but also all-loving in every way possible.
