Creating Successful Situations

My mom taught me about creating successful situations for other people: for my brother, for my sisters, or for anyone who was struggling. What she was talking about was a mediated environment where I would observe how my siblings acted and then act myself so that they would be steered toward good choices. I rebelled, arguing that their choices were the result of their own agency, and I was not responsible for their decisions.

What I didn't realize was that I am responsible. I cannot call out, like Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gensis 4:9). I know that I am, and as such I can "bolster human spirits, clothe cold bodies, feed hungry people, comfort grieving hearts, and lift to new heights precious souls," as President Thomas S. Monson has encouraged us to do (My Brother's Keeper).

I also need to acknowledge that this is what God does for me. James E Talmage says,

"Our Heavenly Father has a full knowledge of the nature and disposition of each of His children, a knowledge gained by long observation and experience in the past eternity of our primeval childhood; a knowledge compared with which that gained by earthly parents through mortal experience with their children is infinitesimally small. By reason of that surpassing knowledge, God reads the future of child and children, of men individually and of men collectively as communities and nations; He knows what each will do under given conditions, and sees the end from the beginning. His foreknowledge is based on intelligence and reason. He foresees the future as a state which naturally and surely will be; not as one which must be because He has arbitrarily willed that it shall be" (Jesus the Christ, notes to chapter 2).

Heavenly Father has watched me for eternity, so He knows how to create successful situations for me; in my quest to become like Him, I need to learn how to serve others in the same way.