The idea of trusting in God’s will may be easier to apply in some situations than others. While it is easy to imagine the benefits of a new partner, it is not so easy to imagine the benefits of cancer, losing a child, or losing your home. We seem very focused on denominating benefit in temporal terms. We seem reluctant to realize just how much of our existence flows from our mind and character. If happiness truly stems from how we perceive life, what greater benefit could there be than obtaining a perception capable of greater happiness?
Many things that happen in life do not have a joyful temporal outcome. But they can and do have a joyful mental outcome. Great loss shows you where you need to grow to find enduring happiness. Significant affliction seems to be the only path to gaining true appreciation, which is critically linked to deep joy.
The Lord taught:
24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matthew 6)
Beware the temptation to measure life’s outcomes solely in terms of the temporal. The kingdom of God is within you, and seeking it first means putting a much higher value on how much of God’s knowledge and character you have acquired and assimilated than you do on anything else—up to, and including, life itself.