The Big Picture

August 18, 2013

One day in the archives of my mind a story about three ant scientists is nicely stored. The three ants were very curious about all things big and determined to check out a very large mass they had heard about through their scientific channels. They arrived at the location and were overwhelmed at the immensity of the specimen. They went to their camp brain trust and were told that the only way they could possibly determine the nature of this specimen was to separate into three scientific parties, explore, then return and report their results.

Their results, after exhaustive study was that there were in fact three different specimens. In fact one scientific party had made an exhaustive study of the trunk of a lounging elephant and determined that in all likelihood the specimen was a warm blooded, large snake-like mammal. The second team did the same kind of in-depth study only their study was of the toes and foot of a much different creature. This was a giant mammal without opposing thumb that had tough thick skin and determined that they had found a prehistoric type animal alive and well in their day. The third team did a similar study on the underbelly of the beast, determining that it was just an ordinary warm blooded beast with no unusual characteristics other than its huge size.

Over the millennia, one friend points out that man has studied and classified many potential ‘gods”. Many were honored with great pyramids, castles, royal identities, and other great characteristics, only to be dashed in subsequent years. The reason – they didn’t have the big picture. Each time people search for the meaning of life, the understanding of who God is, or if, in fact there actually is one; they go about it in ways that provide little understanding and even less knowledge of God the Eternal Father.

The big picture is that life is but a stay-over in this part of God’s vineyard. We were spirit children of the Eternal Father sent here to take care of our temporal business of gaining a body, fully exploring our options, our family, our knowledge of eternal things, then moving on through the eternities.

This week I had a very nice surgeon carve out my gall bladder. The experience was very routine and went without incident, other than waiting in the surgical prep room waiting for a “serious” emergency surgery to take its course. Sometime during the morning I found out that a member of our old LDS Ward had died of cardiac arrest during the night. All of this is part of life’s experiment. We come into the world, we do whatever we determine that we are going to do; then move on to paradise, to the resurrection, to our personal interview with deity, then to our eternal reward.

The big picture shares it all. We are not some microscopic dot in a cosmic bang. We are children of a loving Heavenly Father that gave us a plan through which each of us may attain our highest potential both at temporal beings and in eternal families.

God bless us all as we go forward in our lives sharing love and charity to those with whom we associate.

Duane Jacobs, Father, grandfather, brother, uncle, cousin, and fond friend