Poppa and the Atomic Bomb

My mom and grandpa are here visiting for the week.  This morning, over our granola and Honeycombs, my grandpa and I had an interesting conversation.  (Hallie calls him Poppa.)  There were really two separate conversations, but they connected in my head, so I'll record them both here, and if you can see the connection too, then you think like me!  If you're confused, don't worry about it.  Also, this post is long.

First we were talking about how we don't notice how well our body works until some part of it fails.  My mom had been telling my grandpa about my hypothyroidism, and how the doctors said my thyroid basically just quit, and we were talking about my sister's troubles with her kidney and my brother with his pancreas.  My grandpa was quiet for a moment and then he started talking about how we take our bodies for granted, don't even realize how well they function and how amazing it is that they work so well... until some part of it stops working so well.  Then we notice for sure.

Second we were talking about when my Grandpa worked for the FBI in Los Alamos when he was young, before he was married.  He worked with some of the scientists who helped develop the atomic bomb that we used to end World War II.  He told me that one day he asked one of those scientists, out of curiosity, if he believed that God helped with the invention of the atomic bomb.  He replied that he knew God had helped them develop it.  He said that so much money was poured into the whole thing, in a time when there wasn't a lot of spare money to be spent on failures and "almost-got-its!" that they had to do things that had never been done before and do it right the first time that there was no way they were doing it on their own.  (This came up because I mentioned that I will always believe in God because of bread - no man (or woman) ever looked at wheat growing in a field and said to himself hmm.... if I do this and this and bake it at this temperature I'll get bread!! It just didn't happen... If you know what it takes to get the grain from the wheat, grind the grain to flour, and all the other etc. to make bread then you know as I do - there is a God, and bread is one of the ways I know.)  Anyway, so then we sat there for a moment thinking about the idea that God would help create a device that would kill so many people... and it reminded me of Nephi and Laban.  God knew that it was better that one man should perish than a whole nation should dwindle in unbelief. And so sometimes he lets these things happen for another purpose to be fulfilled.  How long would the war have gone on had we not dropped the bomb?  How many more soldiers would have died fighting, and  how many more women and children in so many nations would have suffered from the ill effects of that war? 

Then my Grandpa pointed out that it's all a part of life, that we get hurt at times and that's what we came here to discover and understand: the pain of being hurt.  It's just like how we take our bodies for granted when they are functioning perfectly.  Before we came to this earth we couldn't understand what "hurt" was because nothing ever did hurt.  We couldn't even know that we were happy because we didn't know what it was to be unhappy.  So it was worth it to us to come here and learn about pain so that we could finally appreciate how good it feels to not be in pain.  Just like we don't ever think about having a kidney until it fails, or we don't appreciate our teeth until we have a toothache.

**I realize that there are many different reasons why we suffer in this life, my main point here is that sometimes life is hard, and sometimes God lets it be hard, but that's what we're here for.  The most important thing to remember is that God knew that sometimes this life would be hard for us, and so he provided a Savior. 

Well, for any of you who read all the way to the end that's the conversation I had with my Grandpa this morning over breakfast.  I wanted to record it because I thought it was really interesting.

Comments

  1. I am very glad you recorded it. :)

    Peter really needs to join the club by having one of his organs say "really? thanks, but no thanks." On second thought, nah, I don't wish that upon him. :)

    Yesterday, I had a period of about an hour where I felt really good after having a fever off and on for two days, and I mentioned to Laurie that I hadn't realized how good good felt until I got to feel it again after feeling wretched.

    Comparison really is how we know anything.

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