Mountain biking and the Gospel.

When thinking about the Gospel I often find patterns occur and we can often make parables to help us understand. Jesus Christ himself often taught in parables and if its good enough for Jesus, by golly, its good enough for me. And I continued to think and ponder and wonder what I should make a parable to, and you know what? I came to the conclusion that I really love mountain biking. Like, a lot. So I figured I might as well go with something that I know a little bit about. And for the most part everybodys ridden a bike before. And if theres one thing that makes mountain biking fun is pushing the limits while still staying safe. Mountain biking is supposed to be fun, not get you killed. Likewise I think of our life here on Earth. We have this big beautiful world that we are privileged to spend a little time on and God sent us here to be able to learn and to progress. When we are able to make some mistakes and learn from them we are able to bring ourselves a little bit closer to God. The old addage "live and learn" literally comes true. Likewise, mountain biking really wouldn't be too fun if we hit a jump and then crashed. But you know what? It gets less and less fun when we don't try to improve and we eat dirt every time we hit a jump thats about the same size and shape.

Mountain Biking getting less fun

But when we learn and our experience grows we can jump all sorts of obstacles; berms, rocks, logs, tree roots, everything that the trail can throw at us. It even prepares us to hit bigger obstacles, which at the time may be scary but afterwards will be a good tale to tell the kids. Likewise, I know that "this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God" (Alma 34:32) and when we exercise our faith in Him as we go through our trials we can become closer to being what we need to be, and, also what we want to be.