Neal A. Maxwell wrote in his book ‘All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience, taught:’
“. . . a hard but essential doctrine, if we are to understand life itself, is the reality that since this is a gospel of growth and life is a school of experience, God, as a loving Father, will stretch our souls at times. The soul is like a violin string: it makes music only when it is stretched. (Eric Hoffer.) God will tutor us by trying us because He loves us, not because of indifference! . . . this sort of divine design in our lives clearly requires the omniscience of God. No wonder those who wrongly think of Him as still progressing with regard to acquisition of knowledge will not be able to manage well the hard doctrines in this chapter.
Because our lives are foreseen by God, He is never surprised by developments within our lives. The sudden loss of health, wealth, self-esteem, status or a loved one—developments that may stun us—are foreseen by God, though not necessarily caused by Him. It is clear, however, that this second estate is to be a learning and testing experience. Once again it is relevant to remind ourselves that His declaration was, “And we will prove them herewith.”
Clearly, we had to be moved on from the first estate—were the truth that “all these things shall give thee experience” no doubt seemed so very logical to us—moved onto this earth, where all these experiences are sometimes so inexplicable and even nearly intolerable.
“C. S. Lewis put it well when he gave us the analogy of remodeling and a living house: “Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. Put presently, He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace.” (Mere Christianity [New York; Macmillan, 1960] p.174) (continued. . .
(From kdm. . .Some of the above is repetition, but ‘sets the stage’ for important things to come.)
