For Lessons We Refuse to Learn…

Life is good—if we leave to let it be. It is also difficult at times. No one ever said it wouldn’t be. Certainly the Creator did not say so—but has given us counsel and precautions. In a sense, He says: Don’t clutter up your life with things that are sure to damage the mind, destroy health and peace, and embarrass and disquiet conscience, and cause a complexity of personal problems.

Some things are not good for people. This is true morally, physically, spiritually. And yet with all the experience of all the ages, and all the counsel God has given, we keep repeating many of the same mistakes—in a sense, hitting our heads against a wall, perhaps wondering why the wall remains while our heads are hurting. It comes down to a question of listening to counsel, of learning the commandments and keeping them.

“…That hour will be a priceless one,” wrote Lida Churchill, “in which mind faces the truth…that no one is free in the sense in which the unthinking mind regards freedom.” ¹ It is true that we are free to choose, but we are not free form the consequences that comes from our choosing. We are not free from the operation of law.

“To be deceived by our …friends is insupportable;” said a French philosopher, “yet to be deceived by ourselves is worse.”² The Creator knows what will bring both happiness and misery to man, and we should not deceive ourselves by supposing we can do anything that is not good for us without, a law paying a price.

There is a law—a law of health, a law of happiness, a law of peace and progress—and we cannot safely set aside what has been tested and proven over and over in the past, without paying a personal for each lesson we refuse to learn.