How do you know...

Yesterday's Sunday School lesson was on adversity, and it was a pretty good one. The kids got involved, and I left feeling pretty good about life. One thing did strike me though...

There were two reasons given as to why we might experience adversity. It could either be due to disobedience to God's commandments, or it could be due to obedience, and thus additional challenges offered by God to help you grow more.

How do you know the difference though?

The more I thought about it though, the more I got to thinking... Why do we need to find reasons as to why we might have a rough time with something?

It seems to me, a lesson on the reasons for adversity could likely be summarized in 2 words...

SHIT HAPPENS!

Perhaps a more useful topic could be on how to handle adversity through attitude and things like that.

If I could tie this back to my previous post as well, particularly the comments made following about listening to the prophet... Ofttimes the excuse is given when past prophets got it wrong, that they were only sharing an opinion at the time, unless they got it right, and then it was revelation, but there really isn't a way to tell the difference.

I could claim to be a prophet, and I could write 2 blog posts. 1 stating that 2012 will be the end of the world, and 1 that 2012 will be just another year. And then depending on the outcome, I could still be considered a valid prophet, because 1:2 odds aren't a bad average at all.