The Sword in the Stone!

We were walking past a tree the other day (a common occurrence here in Tennessee) when I heard a loud rustling sound coming from leaves up top. I look up just in time to see one squirrel chase another squirrel down the trunk and then back up again. I chuckled to myself and suddenly and song from my childhood popped into my head.

Left and right

Disney, Walt, Prod. The Sword in the Stone. Dir. Wolfgang Reitherman. Disney, 1963. Film.

Like day and night

That's what makes the world go round

In and out

Thin and stout

That's what makes the world go round

  

For every up there is a down

For every square there is a round

For every high there is a low

For every to there is a fro

To and fro

Stop and go

That's what makes the world go round  

From, That's What Makes the World go Round

From "The Sword in the Stone"

Composed by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman

I proceeded to do what I've been doing a lot lately, I applied what I was thinking about to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If Lehi, a Book of Mormon prophet, had been writing this song, it would have gone something like this...

"For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

"Wherefore, it must needs have been created for a thing of naught; wherefore there would have been no purpose in the end of its creation. Wherefore, this thing must needs destroy the wisdom of God and his eternal purposes, and also the power, and the mercy, and the justice of God.

"And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God. And if there is no God we are not, neither the earth; for there could have been no creation of things, neither to act nor to be acted upon; wherefore, all things must have vanished away."

2 Nephi 2:11-13

Merlin and Lehi are making the same point, opposition must exist in order for the world to "go round." We have to have bad days in order to appreciate the good days. We have to have hard times in order to grow and have good times. Evil exists because if it didn't then Good would be meaningless. 

I know that it is because of these opposites that surround us that we are able to grow. I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who trusted me* enough to put me in a position where I can experience the bad and the good and grow so much from both. 

*(and all of His children who chose to come to earth)