Lesson learned: He wants to see us succeed

When I was a freshman at BYU, I took Chem 101 from Dr. Zimmerman. I'm pretty sure this class was designed to weed out the strong from the weak. It was a huge class full of pre-med and pre-nursing students, and then the rest of us who were just trying to fill our GE requirement. This class frustrated me. We were graded on a bell curve. It wasn't okay for the whole class to get A's. It was expected that half of the class would get a B or worse. The professor got up, taught the material (aka read the powerpoint slides out loud), and then we were basically on our own to figure it out. The tests didn't match the homework problems. And Dr. Zimmerman had no idea who I was, didn't care if I showed up to class, and didn't care about how I did in the class.

Compare this to second grade.

In second grade, the teacher knows all of her students by name, knows their strengths and weaknesses, knows who their friends are, knows what they need to succeed, and knows where they should sit in the classroom. The teacher would be o-ver-joyed if all of her students got 100% on the test. The teacher carefully designs each lesson to meet the variety of needs in the classroom so she can best help each student. And the curriculum is intentionally designed so that all students will be able to succeed and will be ready for third grade.

Thank goodness life isn't like Chem 101. I'm thinking this life is a lot more like second grade.

Heavenly Father wants us to succeed. That is His sole purpose. He didn't set us up to fail. Why would He create a plan where only a teeny tiny percentage would be able to return to live with Him again? Yes, there are standards we must meet, and, yes, we need to put forth a lot of effort, and, yes, there are going to be difficult tests along the way. But Heavenly Father has set up everything in this life to help us, just as a second grade teacher wants to help her students.

In this last General Conference, Elder J. Devn Cornish gave a talk that explained this principal really well: "The God of heaven is not a heartless referee looking for any excuse to throw us out of the game. He is our perfectly loving Father, who yearns more than anything else to have all of His children come back home and live with Him as families forever. He truly gave His Only Begotten Son that we might not perish but have everlasting life! Please believe, and please take hope and comfort from, this eternal truth. Our Heavenly Father intends for us to make it! That is His work and His glory."

I love how encouraging and simple that is. This talk made me realize that more people are going to make it to the Celestial Kingdom than we may think. If we work hard, honestly do our best, and keep our covenants, we're going to make it.

So keep at it.