The view we have, or take of things, has always been a fascinating thought for me. Even as a young child, I sometimes did a double take when I heard an interesting slant on a subject. For example, back in the 1930’s, just before I was old enough to go to school, my father bought me a little hatchet. He bought it for me so that I could shadow him when he was chopping wood for the wood burning stoves that we were dependent on for both cooking and for heating our house in Minnesota. One day my hatchet came up missing and I remember how bad I felt. About a week later I was at my little friend’s house, who lived about a block away. I even remember that his name was Jimmy Hanks, as he was an interesting individual and hard to forget. While there at his house, I noticed my little hatchet and when I went to pick it up he got it first, and we wrestled over it, and I finally prevailed.
As I headed for home with my hatchet, he was crying and calling after me, saying, “I stole it from you and you can‘t steal it back.” I can still see him standing there in my mind’s eye, with tears running down his chubby little cheeks, leaving little white trails where they washed away the dirt. His statement was so unusual, even to a little boy, that the scene is still vivid in my mind, as if it were yesterday, yet it has been 70+ years ago. What an interesting way of thinking. Jimmy’s view of things is probably a one-in-a- million view. When conflicts arise, most of us try to take a look at the problem from at least two sides to make a relatively fair assessment of the issue before we make a judgment.
The best view, of course, is the one that our Heavenly Father has, a view from above. He can see the past and the future in a panoramic, four-, maybe even five-dimensional view, the end from the beginning. For example, it is very hard for us, in our limited view as humans, to try to view the Plan of Salvation and catch the importance of the work that must be done for the billions of people who have lived on the earth. If we could only catch a glimpse of it and be able to see the end and His purpose finally fulfilled, the “immortality and eternal life of man.” I believe that such a view would give us a much clearer focus on the things of greatest importance. God bless us to, at least, find a balance in life so that His work can move forward in regards to our ancestors.