Have you ever wondered about how decisions from your past have made such huge impacts to your present life, and the theological implications of these decisions?

For example, when I graduated with my degree in engineering in the early 1980’s, there was lots of jobs for engineers, and I had many employment offers. So my wife and I looked at the jobs, and selected the one I’m currently still employed in. It wasn’t the highest paying one, but seemed to offer security, which is evident in that I’m still here over 35 years later.

Now lets look at the fork in the road. My job moved me to Southern California. The other offers were in the bay area of San Francisco. So me and my small family (two children) moved to SoCal. We had a third child while here, and all my children met their spouses locally in the Stake’s YSA ward. If I had moved to the Bay area, my children would not have met their spouses, and would have married somebody else. I would not have any of the grand kids I have today, because they all would have a different parent, with different DNA. And to get really down in the weeds (with TMI), my third child would not be who she is, as she was conceived after a month long business trip. With the millions of possible DNA combinations what are dependent upon exactly when fertilization takes place, I can’t see my third child being the same person today if I had taken a job up North.

So what does this all have to do with church? Now I suppose one could argue that that I would have had the same kids, and grand kids, as God could have made sure my children all met their spouses, if you subscribe to the Saturdays Warrior view of the world that I wrote about here.   

If you believe that God takes a more hands off approach, and that spirit children in the pre-mortal life and not assigned to specific families, then none of this would make any difference.

The question for you then is, how much do you rely on the “spirit” to guide you in seemingly temporal decisions? Is there really a purely temporal choice? What color of car I should buy might be classified as such. But then where do we draw the line on when we need to seek heavenly input? Maybe we should be living our lives in such a way that the spirit can influence all aspects of our lives, like what job we accept, what car we buy, and when and how many children we should have.