Appoint

There are a lot of things in this life that we have control over and can determine if and when they will happen. We can control when we brush our teeth, what we will eat for breakfast, who we will talk to, and when we think we've done enough work for the day. There will be consequence for these choices, but we do have control over the initial actions.

Things we don't have control over may be how quickly our teeth will decay, if our breakfast will upset our stomach, what the mood of the people we talk to will be, and the amount of work that we should do every day. Some of these things are determined by the choices of others, but some of these may simply be the result of being part of the universe.

These scriptures talk about these two types of events, those we have control over and those we don't. The first one is about us being appointed for specific callings by God to do specific things. God has a plan that involves us (in actuality it really is all about us), but he has also made it very clear that our involvement in that plan is completely up to us. Just like with an appointment at work, we can choose not to show up one day, to do a sloppy job, or even turn down the appointment to begin with.

Something that makes our church different than any other church I've come into contact with is how member driven it is. Every single member of every single congregation has a job to do, and we believe it is a reflection of our faith to accept these appointments when they come. Why it is a reflection on our faith is because of two facts that we as members of our church accept - that these appointments come by revelation just like it was in the New Testament (so it really is God calling you to these jobs), and because we believe in order to become like Christ and truly be his disciples we have to learn how to serve selflessly and constantly where the need is, not just where we would like to.

The other type of appointment these scriptures talk about are things that are like check points in God's plan. Huge ones like The Creation, The Fall, The Atonement, and The Second Coming, are ones that have/will effect everyone on the planet in a very obvious way.

But there are also smaller ones that are more individual. The one that comes to mind is everyone's appointment to death. It says in Doctrine and Covenants 42:48:

48 And again, it shall come to pass that he that hath faith in me to be healed, and is not appointed unto death, shall be healed.

and again in Hebrews 9:27:

27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:

These scriptures say to me that people don't just die - that one day they are fine and walking around and the next they are taken from us. These scriptures tell me that it was all part of the plan, that God wanted them home, that they were done here and were then able to move forward. We get angry about it because of the separation, because we don't want to be alone, and I can't even conceive of how hard it would be to even try to have an eternal perspective in these cases - but I know that God has a plan for us, that our lives and the days that we have on this Earth are meticulously counted in Heaven, and that He would not separate us from our loved ones for the short time between their death and ours unless it was absolutely necessary. I believe in a loving God, who really is not in the business of making us hurt unless it was ultimately for our eternal happiness.