A Somewhat Pointless and Totally Stereotypical Post About Festival of Colors

So I don't want to make a giant deal about anything, but yesterday I went to Festival of Colors and I realized some awesome symbolism that I wanted to share.

First, for those people who are not from Utah and don't know what Festival of Colors is.  Basically you go to a Hindu temple out in Spanish Fork, and throw chalk dust at each other.

Now, on to the symbolism.

Before we even got our own colors we looked like this.

So you have to park a long way away from the temple and walk up this hill to get there.  At the same time you are going up, there are some people walking down from the festival.  These people are already covered in chalk.  Some of them even had extra that they had kept to throw at people they passed.  By the time you reach the top, you are already a bit colorful.  When you get there, you have to wait and press through a giant crowd to get your own colors.  Then when you have them, you kind of go crazy.  Throwing colors at each other, dumping chalk on strangers, even coloring your own hair and clothes, trying to become a rainbow with eyes.  Then, you realize how little chalk you have left, and you start rationing it.  You try and get more people to throw it at you than you throw at them.

By the end we looked like this!

I want to try an liken this all to a testimony.  I know it's all a bit cheesy but bear with me.

You can't just decide to have a testimony.  You have to put in the effort to get it.  When people see you trying they bear theirs to you, toss a little beauty over you while you're looking.  It makes you want it even more.  When you gain a testimony, you are ecstatic, you throw it everywhere, spill it carelessly, and don't keep track of it.  Then life gets hard and you realize how easy it is to lose.  You have to be careful from then on, not to lose it all.  You have to rely on others a bit to keep it up.  However, after a while, if you put in the effort, you can find more, and you can be beautiful and colorful with your faith in the Lord.

Alright, so maybe it's not a perfect analogy, but I hope it worked a little.  I'll leave it up to you to agree or disagree, this is just something I realized that brightened my weekend.

We Never Get What We Deserve

This week in New Testament we touched this really great topic that I wanted to share.

We've all heard that "life isn't fair."  Right?  I know I have.  I actually have never really believed this.  I felt that people really did tend to get what they really wanted.  Of course, not EVERYTHING, but the general things.  If you want to have a happy, fulfilled life, you get one.  If you want to have a good or bad relationship with your family and friends, you do.  It is not something you can't control.  Your life is in your hands.

Other people I know, when thinking how unfair life is, find it an awful idea.  Not getting the video game you want, or the job you want, or the spouse you feel would be best.

Well in New Testament we looked at it a different way, at how life being unfair can be a good thing.

Think about your life, more specifically, your actions.  Are you perfect?  I should hope not!  We are terrible, selfish creatures who muddle along through life.  Even with the gospel and the Spirit guiding us, we can't even come close to perfection.  Now in the Plan of Salvation, people are placed in the three kingdoms according to what they deserve.  Still, if you think about it, with no one being perfect, no one really deserves the Celestial Kingdom. We aren't good enough.

Now, a different road.  Consider the Savior.  He was perfect, and still, He suffered beyond anything we can comprehend.  He did not deserve that, but He chose it.

Because of this, He has a surplus of suffering, and can take ours away.  Because life was not "fair" to Him, life is not "fair" to us.  If we can realize this, and use His incredible Atonement in our lives, we too can get what we don't deserve.  We can attain what is beyond our reach, and we can be happy forever.

So the next time you think about how life is just so unfair, stop, think about it, and give thanks.  Because if life was fair, we would condemn ourselves.  But since it is not, we might just be saved.