“Yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God; yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which never have been revealed; yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance.” (Alma 26:22). I'm sure all of us at one time or another have struggled with the mysteries of God. One of the most persistent mysteries of God that is particularly hard for us to accept and understand is the fact that God can be all powerful and all good and yet allow so much evil and misery and suffering to abound in the world. It makes no sense to us that if God really can do anything and if He really does love us all, then why doesn't He just shut everything down and give everything a good thorough cleaning so that we can enjoy the sweet things in life without it being ruined by all of this opposition mixed in. I want to unfold a little bit of this mystery by talking about Dum Dums. You know, the little lollipops. When they are producing lollipops and have finished with one flavor, there is still quite a bit of residue from the old flavor on the machinery. Rather than waste a lot of time and energy - not to mention quite a lot of candy - cleaning all of the machinery and purging any traces of the old flavor before adding on the new flavor, they simply start running the new flavor until it pushes out any vestiges of the old flavor. That means they might end up with a batch of lollipops that is part blueberry and part cherry. It would be a bit of a chore to come up with packaging for all of these different flavor combinations so they just put a mystery wrapper on all of these lollipops that are partly one flavor and partly another. And the mystery flavors end up being some of the most popular ones! This is exactly how the mysteries of God works. The Lord would not allow His servants to yank up the tares while the wheat was still young and tender, and the Lord does not shut down the factory to clean out all of the old flavor before adding the new. We may be flawed and broken and unclean and impure, but Jesus Christ will pour the enabling power and saving grace of His Atonement into our lives and slowly push out the wicked and rebellious flavors in our soul. This part of our eternal journey where we are partly righteous and partly wicked is not wasted, just like Dum Dum doesn't waste any of its mystery flavors. As we repent and exercise faith and bring forth good works we will slowly but surely be filled with the sweet flavors of the fruits of the Spirit, which are sweet above all that is sweet, and pure above all that is pure and most joyous to the soul. And in the meantime, I hope that we can learn to appreciate the crazy mixed up flavors of the mysteries of God as we try to do the best we can with all of our weaknesses and hangups and incomplete knowledge of our Heavenly Father's plan and our place in it.
