WHY

I have been in many beautiful places in the world, and have marveled of the exquisite appearance of the beaches in Punta Cana, the magnificent splendor of the arches in Utah, of the roaring waters either in Niagara or Iguazu, of the colors in flowers in Singapore and other places, the wonders in the forests in Europe and North America, the delicate shape of lakes and valleys in Japan, the breathtaking sensation when we admire so many other enchanted places in Mexico, Africa, Asia and other parts of this planet. For sure I have missed many other places I will never admire in my life, but know that they are there and when I remember and replay in my mind all these beautiful places I had opportunity to see, I wonder of these magnificent creations and feel that life, my life your life is precious and that we men, are here in this planet to have this joy of just be mesmerized by so much beauty.

On the other hand through my life I have witnessed, in person or through the extensive coverage by the news of many awful events either natural or man made, and have been shocked in dismay of the suffering of so many innocent people under the effects of the force of nature as in earthquakes hurricanes, tsunamis, tornados, etc. or by the wrongdoing of men incapable of see with love their fellowmen causing terrible harm to innocent people that were in their path.

The events in the two paragraphs above are a generalization of what I would like to express, but in particular I also have been and observed human nature acting in one or other way, and I have been overtaken by joy or pain of being either part of events so beautiful or so awful, or participate with others in making people happy because of an act of love for them. All these things bring to my mind a question: Why?  Why all these apparently opposite aspects in our existence? Before I try to answer my question, I will be specific of events in my life that have been a substantial part of or have measurable consequences in my life and the life of those associated with me.  

We are in this world with the natural plan of having during our mortal life four grandparents; and many persons actually have had the four of them, but in my case I had only one. Many times we think when we are in despair because of an inconsequent happening that our suffering is the worst of the human race, but I have just look in my grandfather Juan or my grandmother Altagracia lives and see that our own lives have been so simple and easy in comparison that I ache for them: In their twenties they were married and in 1911 they had two children, my beloved mother and my uncle, she was 7 and he was 5 years of age. The violence they were living in was one of the worst in the history of Mexico or for that matter of the world. He, Juan was the engineer of a railroad train when the bandits (or other kind of people with ideals or not, it does not matter because in those turbulent times there were all kind of them) with a bomb made his train to explode, killing him and leaving the young mother with two children at the mercy of this awful and unforgiving environment of the revolutionary Mexico. Just imagine what was going to do this young woman with these two children alone and mourning his beloved husband? The event that killed my grandfather was not an accident but the common happening in those awful days, now she was alone and the future was not in any ways to look for. Why this happened? Why my young and healthy grandfather was deprived of seeing his children grow, he was a good responsible man, why was he killed? Why my grandmother was left so lonely and so deprived of everything in a so terrible world?  Why?

I can relate many other awful events after that one, but let me tell you some other that are not as sad as the one I just wrote about, but on the contrary have some good ends. When I was around six years old two things happened that I remember very well: one was my adventure in the river close to my home. The river was a wild one during the Summer rains, and we dare to cross it just to prove we could do it, but that was after I was six; after the Summer rains the river was a peaceful one and have some places where we were able to enjoy swimming or fishing. At six I did not know how to swim, but nevertheless I went to “swim” at the river many times; my mother expressly forbade us to go, but I went anyway. Since I didn’t know the art of floating on the water, I use to “swim” in the shallow part of the river, while those who knew enjoy the deep waters. In that particular day I was “swimming” meaning moving my hands as if I knew how to swim, when suddenly I was unable to touch the bottom of the river and began to panic; furiously I moved my hands even more rapidly but with no good results. I was drowning, and there was no help. I don’t remember if I cried for help; I guess I didn’t because I was swallowing a lot of water; when it appeared that there was no hope, I felt that somebody helped me, and suddenly I was laying down on the pebbles outside the water; a man had been observing me, but at the beginning, he told me afterwards, he thought I was swimming, but he noted that actually I was drowning and close to death, and went and pull me out. Immediately he began to teach me how to swim. That afternoon, my father (everybody knew my father in town) told me about the incident and encouraged me to learn to swim. I learned and enjoyed the river from then on.  Why I didn’t drown? Why this man was there precisely in that moment and saved my life?

More or less around the same time in my life, once I was playing close to home and without paying attention crossed the street running, a car came and I was in front of it. It should rolled  over me and killed me, but instead in an unbelievable way I sat down in its fender, and was taken in a ride for a few meters while the driver stopped the car. He came out trembling and looked at me thinking that I was dead, but I was just scared but with no harm at all. I don’t know if he was speeding or not, but he was fast enough to go several meters before he could stop the vehicle. I never forgot these two incidents, because I always felt that without an “external” help, I would not be writing here right now. Why I was not killed while many other people are killed under apparently less dangerous situations?

At the beginning of this 21st century my lovely wife and I built a house in Park City, Utah right there on top of the mountains. The garage was around 15 meters (40 feet) above the street level, and the house was on top of it. Our neighbors’ houses cannot be seen from ours, they were far below us and every lot was almost one acre in size. We decided to install an elevator in the garage to take us up to the house thinking that with age we will need it. We used the elevator many times and enjoyed it, and always used it together. It was the beginning of April 2002 and that Thursday it was very cold up there. We went to town to do some errands and told my son who lived in Salt Lake City that we were going to be at home the whole weekend and agreed that they will come to see us on Sunday after we watched the LDS Conference in TV.  When we returned home, we entered the elevator, but before we started it, I told my wife, ”go ahead, I will go and check some things in the garage”.  Every time when we arrived together, we climbed together in the elevator, but not this time; this time she was going by herself while I remained in the garage doing something. The elevator started and suddenly I heard my wife crying out for help, when after a lot of sparking the elevator halted between the floors.  My wife was crying telling me she could not see anything; I tried to calm her down and told her that I was going to call immediately the elevator company to come and help us. I did it and they told me they would come as soon as they could. Meanwhile I remained talking to her all the time, assuring her that help was in the way. The day before, a service man had come from the company that installed the elevator one year before, to give maintenance and he told us everything was perfect.  After two hours of being trapped she was rescued and we began to see the extremely dangerous situation and the terrible possible consequences we had just avoided, because I went “to check something in the garage”. What happened was that the guy who came before, left the package with all the cables in a way that when the elevator moved, the cables began to move in its way, and after few times, the cables were cut by the elevator; this happened precisely when my wife was in it. Inside the elevator a phone was installed, but the phone cable was also severed. In those times the cell phones were not as common as they are now, and we did not have any. If I had climbed the elevator with her, we would not have any chance to do anything, we had remained there under freezing conditions for the whole weekend (Sunday afternoon at the earliest when my son was supposed to come or call us). Why did I go to “check the things in the garage? Why I did not go with her as we had done every single time in the past? Why?

When we came back from Paraguay in 2007 after two years there, we bought a Honda Odyssey minivan. My wife convinced me to do it even when I had set my mind to buy a different car. We were living at the time in Houston Texas, but still had our home in the beach in the north part of Sonora Mexico. We traveled there several times driving the minivan to Tucson Arizona and then to beautiful Puerto Peñasco.  The speed limit in the interstate highway 10 between San Antonio and El Paso Texas is 80 mph, so I set my cruise control at 85, and I was enjoying it. My wife was doing something with some very good cookies, and I was distracted trying to get one, I turned my head to the cookies for few seconds and when I turned it again to the front, what I saw was just gravel and no pavement! I am not sure if I touched the brakes pedal, because I remember that I told to myself “don’t apply the brakes!” But for sure I did it, at least very lightly since the cruise control was disengaged. I managed very skillfully (??) to bring the car back to the highway although I felt for a moment that it tilted separating two wheels from the ground. When we were back in the pavement, my beloved wife began to cry uncontrollably. Since then she called the minivan “la hija” (the daughter, minivans are feminine in Spanish, while “cars” are males.) If instead of buying that minivan we had bought the car I wanted, for sure we had been killed; only a Honda Odyssey with its low gravity center would be able not to roll over outside the highway at 85 mph. Why we were not killed that time? Many other people are killed in accidents that happen under circumstances not as extreme as was ours.

In 1985 in the Mexico City earthquake, thousands of people die, and some others did not, many in miraculously ways. I have heard several of these events and we think “why so many people die in this kind of awful events and why some people do not?

Why so much beauty on earth and why these kind of catastrophes? Why? Why? By the way if some of you do not know, 27 miles north of the border between Sonora and Arizona in the highway that takes us from Tucson to Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Point for the Arizonians) there is a small town and its name is WHY.

Of course the answer to my question could be very simple for some people. Some would say in the happenings is the answer, you should not see beyond that. Coincidences, fortuitous acts, etc. Agnostics and atheists would say these things and dismiss my wonder with a look in their eyes indicating there is nothing there to marvel about. Events just happen, and sometimes for some people with terrible consequences and sometimes for other people with happy endings. That’s all; it is just good or bad luck.

To answer my question, I have to rely in a very important person who asked the same question when he was marveled of the wonderful creation of this wonderful planet and the universe: “And Moses called upon God saying: Tell me, I pray thee, why these things are so, and by what thou madest them?  And behold, the glory of the Lord was upon Moses, so that Moses stood in the presence of God, and talked to him face to face. And the Lord God said unto Moses: For mine own purpose have I made these things. Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me.  And by the word of my power, have I created them, which is mine Only Begotten Son, who is full of grace and truth.  And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.”  

The answer came to Moses from God: “For mine own purpose”. Everything is or happens for “His own purpose”.  This changes my question from why to what?  What is His purpose?  Moses had the answer: “Moses spake unto the Lord, saying: Be merciful unto thy servant, O God, and tell me concerning this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, and also the heavens, and then thy servant will be content. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine.  And as one earth shall pass away, and the heavens thereof even so shall another come; and there is no end to my works, neither to my words. For behold, this is my work and my glory- to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

So, His purpose is to bring to pass immortality and eternal life of man. For those who do not follow Him, this will sound as a redundancy: “immortality and eternal life”. It looks like immortality is not to die, and eternal life to live forever. However, the conjunction and tells us that they are different concepts. Because of the atonement brought to pass by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ everybody in this world, ALL the children of God are going to received immortality, meaning all of us are going to be resurrected, but NOT ALL will receive Eternal Life. Eternal Life is for those who accepted Jesus Christ and keep his commandments.

Actually I dare to say that God’s purpose for His children is to bring to pass Eternal Life for All, but it simply cannot come to all because some of us do not want it, cannot stand it, because we simply stubbornly reject what is offered to us, and are content with “just” immortality.

If we accept my thinking that He wants for all of us Eternal Life, then everything on earth, all the beauty, all the happenings are there and are happening for us to have eternal life.  We have been called and elected to have eternal life; it is up to us to achieve it, since Jesus Christ paved the way already with his atonement to put us in the narrow path to Eternal Life.

I do not know many things, but I wonder if since His purpose is so wonderful for us, maybe He is helping us constantly for that purpose, and some times it is enough for some people the length of life they have had or, maybe some others need extra time or extra happenings to put them back in the narrow path. He knows us, He loves us, after all we are His children, and he is trying always the best for us all. Maybe those in the earthquake, in the tsunami were where they were because it was the best for them in the context of their eternal life or their immortality. Maybe sometimes we are preserved because we needed something for us or for others and in some way He is conducting all of us to make the path the correct one, instead of the one leading us astray. He is always trying, He is always loving us and in the Eternal context, which most of the times is incomprehensible for us, we have to die in a particular moment at that time, or it was all that we needed as a measure to state the quality of our existence on earth, or maybe we needed a little bit more. Eternity is His realm but we still need to learn a lot about it.