Cross Training - Doctrines of Faith and God the Father

One of God's faithful missionaries, Allen Gardiner, experienced many physical difficulties and hardships throughout his service to the Savior. Despite his troubles, he said, "While God gives me strength, failure will not daunt me." In 1851, at the age of 57, he died of disease and starvation while serving on Picton Island at the southern tip of South America. When his body was found, his diary lay nearby. It bore the record of hunger, thirst, wounds, and loneliness. The last entry in his little book showed the struggle of his shaking hand as he tried to write legibly. It read, "I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God."

Of course, my first thought after reading this story may have been like yours-  "WHAT GOODNESS!!  Another tragic story of one person's life seeming to end tragically, and for some strange reason, they still give up kudos to God's goodness.  How is that?"  

I would begin to wonder if there was some sort of "brain-washing" going on in Gardiner's life.  How can a person, living on this earth with all her miscues and difficulties and adversities, still call God good?  It seems to grind against the character of God.  If God were good he would correct the problems in order to bring life to this creation.  Instead, how most view God is as the celestial little boy with a magnifying glass turning ants into cinders under the hot July sun.  

Take for instance the tree that God planted in the garden of Eden and placed there as a warning to Adam and Eve.  Why did he feel the need to put it there in the first place?  Here's what Gilbert Bilezikian says - "The 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' must not viewed as a trap set by God in the path of Adam and Eve to lure them, test them, and make them trip.  Such actions would be worthy only of an evil god.  In his holiness, the God of the Bible gave the tree to the humans as a gracious warning against the twin danger of sin and death.  The tree stood as a 'No Trespassing' sign, as if God were saying, 'Please, respect and protect the goodness of your humanity.'"

So then, as I'm sitting here being cranial and intellectual in my own way, I ask myself, "why doesn't God get out his celestial vacuum and suck out all the bad from his creation?  Then it dawned on me.  The only result in doing that would be complete annihilation, which lies contrary to God's nature which is limitless love for you and I.  So what does God do instead?  He provides us every opportunity to find His Son in the mix of this world that is a melting pot of the joys of the Lord, as well as, the most despicable sin.  

I think I understand better the statement - "I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God."

Later