The School of Experience – Sunday, April 06, 1997
It is hard sometimes to understand why we must suffer in this life. A father watched his daughter play through the one-way glass of her nursery school window. He smiled, and like many of us, more than once he would reach for the doorknob, ready to rescue her from the dangers of discovery. However, his desire to protect her was tempered by the instinct of a loving father, who knows that scraped knees, tear-stained cheeks, and bruised feelings are sometimes part of the growth development.
In the shadows of his daughter’s schoolroom, this father pondered a wonderful lesson in life. Certainly, a loving Father in Heaven could protect us from pain – if not prevent it altogether. And yet, without leaving us comfortless, he allows us to experience sorrows, uncertainty and injustice, and sometimes to trip and fall.
Life is a school of experience – a time of probation. We learn as we bear our afflictions and live through our heartaches. Even so many of life’s lessons may be hard to understand. We may wonder why and for how long. As Neal A. Maxwell summarized “… the arithmetic of anguish is something we mortals cannot comprehend. We cannot do the sums because we do not have all the numbers.”1 but we are never left without comfort and hope. The savior assured: “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”2 peace and good cheer can triumph over turmoil.
In spite of trials, and sometimes because of them, we can vary each other’s burdens and “look to God and live.”3
life school of experience is so much more than a playground. It presents us with lessons in endurance and exercises in faith. While we cannot totally eliminate afflictions, with the Lord’s help we can endure them well and thus learn and grow.
1 Neal A. Maxwell, All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co., 1980), p. 37.
2 New Testament, John 16:33.
3 The Book of Mormon, Alma 37:47.
April 06, 1997
Broadcast Number 3,528