Blessings?

Great question.

I think, in the specific case of your grandfather, you should accept his jesture of kindness with thanks and appreciation, including his testimony. You should thank him for both (you don’t have to agree with his view to be thankful for his love). I am guessing from your limited comments that your grandfather was thinking of you and sincerely would like to share something with you — both his resources and his wisdom. I believe he deserves your attention since he put so much of his life into your existence (raising your parent, and whatever he has done for you too). Who knows? He may have a sense of his passing soon, or be reflecting upon his life, and wants to do the “patriarch” thing. I say that in a nice way. I think it is a beautiful tradition, and certainly applies to women and their role “matriarch” in a family. It’s just a nice thing. So enjoy and accept it with appreciation and thanks.

On the subject of miracles, that is his belief and his view reflecting back on his life. Our lives are stories. We can build them many different ways. I think there is a positive spiritual essence dveloped when we acknowledge God as the source of good things. It is an act of humility. It helps us not to be so attached to our material possessions.

Did he get wealth because of his obedience? I don’t want to say he didn’t. It’s his story. I would point out that him being old now places him in an era of time where our country exploded with affluence. He would have been positioned perfectly to participate in that. People under the age of 30 to 40 will be participating in an era of economic contraction for a good deal of their life. So is it obedience and blessing or historic timing? Is it both? Who knows…. *shrug*

I’ll share a story of a miracle in my life. I choose to believe it was the intervention of God, and it had a symbolic meaning to me. When I was a missionary, my companion and I were walking home on a cold, rainy night. We were in a city walking down the sidewalk. We crossed where a small narrow side street intersected, it was more like an alleyway. This lady was driving too fast and slammed on the brakes too late when she saw us in the street. I was dead center in her path, my companion behind me a few feet. I saw her out of the corner of my eye and thought “I don’t think that car will stop…” Right then, time slowed down (this was way before the matrix movies, hehe). A split second before the car hit me, I heard a distinct voice in my head say “Jump now!” And at the same time I heard that, I could see the whole situation crystal clear. I could see exactly how I had to jump, at the right time, or I would end up going under the car when it hit me. So I jumped. That made me slam into the windshield, and I was thrown forward to the side of the car. My companion was hit by the bumper and thrown the other way.

Here’s the wierd miracle part of it, and the symbol. I was not seriously harmed, and my clothes were not torn even though I tumbled across the asphalt a couple times. The only place on my whole body that was hurt was my pinky, exactly where I was still wearing this snake ring from my pre-mission life. It was my last symbol of not being a missionary (going on a mission had been a hard decision for me). I had a cut where the ring had been torn off my finger and ruined. I thought about that the whole way home… It was very symbolic to me. I never forgot that part of the experience.

So was that my subconsious mind kicking in for survival, or was it God giving me an interesting experience with a meaning? hmmmmm… Could be both really, but the miracle aspect of it is valuable to me. So I decide to think of it that way.

Oh by the way, she was really worried we were going to press charges or file a lawsuit. She hit us with a nice Mercedes, hehe (in Germany). We insisted we were ok. She made it a point to take us to lunch a few days later. We gave her a BofM and asked her to read it I doubt anything came of it, but she seemed like that type of person who would have only gotten a BofM by hitting some missionaries. LOL.

I can’t say that I have had such experiences but can’t say I have faithfully kept the commandments either.

Nobody has kept all the commandments Curt, not even your grandfather. You have miracles in your life if you look for them and choose to see things as miracles. That is how it happens IMO.

I’ve had miraculous things happen to me in my life, and I am not particularly obedient in the classic sense of the LDS Church.

So what is the answer? How can that be?

I have faith in goodness, I see God as the source of everything that is good. I have felt blessed in life, but personally I can’t correlate the blessings to any specific actions on my part. They do seem a bit random to me. I do however cherish the blessings – and try to “pay it forward” as best as I can. There does seem to be some connection to attitude – you see what you look for, and personally if that’s all it is I still think the role that the church plays in people’s lives is for the most part positive. Again, I hope to be able to accept the things that I currently do not understand.

Hi Herber. Thank you for bumping this thread. I have had a couple of miracules or unexplainable things in my life. Personally I think there are many that throw out miracules way to much for all the tiniest little things and promptly display them as miracules. Then I think there is also a lot of people that to quickly dismiss some unexplainable events as chance.

I can share a few situations where I have chosen to have faith in miracules sometimes.

When I was 16 the amount of constant physical and emotional abuse I substained and the lack of being able to protect (failure)those I cared about led me to OD on some about 190 extra strength Tylenol pills according to the doctors. At the time I felt I has failed after passing a few hours and went to school to avoid suspion. My best friend knew of my situation but did not know what had just happened. He seemed to get some promoting that indeed something had happened even though he said he couldn’t tell anything out of the ordinary. Promptly the peramedics were called to school and delivered me to the hospital despite my repeated deceleration that nothing was wrong. I remember the stomach pump. I remember other test. I stayed in the hospital for 2 weeks. The first week I was mostly upset at god for saving this worthless soul(well that’s what I thought at the time) while letting others I felt who were of far more worth die. The doctors has told me I had a toxity level of about 380 with the critical danger or death level at 90 they said. They told me they had absolutely no explanation of why I was still even alive on a toxic level so high above the danger level. They has spent a few days on the telephone calling specialist around America to try to get a better understand of what they found but non they called had encountered anyone surviving at half that toxity level. So they asked me to run a lot of test to better understand. I agreed.

When I left 2 weeks latter from ICU they told me they still had absolutely no explanation of how I was still alive but if ever there was a reason to believe in miracules to them, thus was it. I have no proof if there is a god or not. But I do now that faith in such a god has helped me in my life so much after exceprience. My testimony was born from that experience and a few other bizarre experiences that seemed like small miracules. I have absolutely no idea why god would choose to save me over others I see as more worthy. But I choose to have faith that god knows what he is doing even if I don’t understand it from my dark glass.

Forgotten_Charity, I like your statements and I like how you “choose” to look at it that way. I do think it is a choice.

After all, if technology provides miracles, or science or medical advancements, are we opening up blessings and miracles to things that do not come from God directly?

Thank you Heber13 and afterall. In light of difficult situations many of us face from time to time, I feel the need to turn things around and say to myself. “well how can I use this situation to draw strength from it”. What ever our situations or blessings I hope we can draw strength from them and each other. I think the best blessing is just having the love and strength and understanding to support each other. It seems small but I think it is pretty miraculous indeed to those in need.

I was moved by a statement in the D&C or Book of Mormon that says the Lord is not pleased when people don’t acknowledge his hand in all things. That has always stuck with me whenever I attribute great things to my own doing, history, circumstance, etcetera.

On the other hand, I haven’t seen a direct correlation between rigtheous living and blessings — at least, not the kind of formulaic righteous living dictated by the church. But at the same time, I don’t deny that it may have had an impact on the good things that have happened in my life.

For example, when I was a full tithe payer, serving long hours in the Bishopric, holding a TR, I fasted and prayed and thought and deliberated over buying a house. I finally went ahead with it, and lost most of my life savings. At yet another time, I was serving long hours as a Stake Executive Secretary and then applied to adopt a child through LDS Social Services, and that ended in the most heart-wrenching, surprising way with church people acting in ways that floored my testimony. I felt no blessings for significant righteousness I had shown in that part of my life.

At another time, I was not active for seven years or paying tithing, and during that period saw opportunity after opportunity come my way to keep me employed, leading to an international experience, the ability to live in the southern states, greater career opportunity than ever before. That period was one of the most financially prosperous periods in my life.

And then, as a missionary, I had countless spiritual experiences that were undeniable…so…..in my view, whether these things are from God, or a matters of circumstance is for us to decide when its not clear. I am immersing myself in positive psychology right now, and I chose to believe the following for the sake of my personal happiness:

a) When good things happen, it’s due to a combination of my own actions and God’s most of the time. I give the credit and glory to God for the good things that happen because He has created a universe that is positive to live in.

b) When bad things happen, they are due to the choices of other people, are temporary, and due to unusual circumstances. If my own actions precipitated the bad thing, I look at my motives at the time and ascribe it to things I could not anticipate, assuming I truly acted with pure motives.

In the absence of any clear indicators that God was, or was not involved, I am trying to choose this way of viewing the world as this is the way optimists view it. So, be thankful the connection between your actions and God’s blessings is not clear; that gives you freedom to view those blessings as you wish. Pick the road that makes you happiest.

Well said Roy, some are way more choosy than others. I have always respected Cadence for his choice in views he’s expressed here.