Penasquitos Stake Institute

Excerpt from "The Play and the Plan" by Boyd K. Packer

The Great Plan of Happiness

The course of our mortal life, from birth to death, conforms to eternal law and follows a plan described in the revelations as the great plan of happiness. The one idea, the one truth I would inject into your minds, is this: There are three parts to the plan. You are in the second or the middle part, the one in which you will be tested by temptation, by trials, perhaps by tragedy. Understand that and you will be better able to make sense of life and to resist the disease of doubt and despair and depression.

The Play

The plan of redemption, with its three divisions, might be likened to a grand three-act play. Act 1 is entitled “Premortal Life.” The scriptures describe it as our first estate (see Jude 1:6; Abraham 3:26, 28). Act 2, from birth to the time of resurrection, is the “Second Estate.” And act 3 is called “Life After Death” or “Eternal Life.”

In mortality, we are like actors who enter a theater just as the curtain goes up on the second act. We have missed act 1. The production has many plots and subplots that interweave, making it difficult to figure out who relates to whom and what relates to what, who are the heroes and who are the villains. It is further complicated because we are not just spectators; we are members of the cast, on stage, in the middle of it all!

Memory Veiled

As part of the eternal plan, the memory of our premortal life, act 1, is covered with a veil. Since we enter mortality at the beginning of act 2 with no recollection of act 1, it is little wonder that it is difficult to understand what is going on.

That loss of memory gives us a clean start. It is ideal for the test; it secures our individual agency and leaves us free to make choices. Many choices must be made on faith alone. Even so, we carry with us some whispered knowledge of our premortal life and our status as offspring of immortal parents.

You were born in innocence, for “every spirit of man was innocent in the beginning” (D&C 93:38), and you have an inborn sense of right and wrong, for the scriptures tell us in the Book of Mormon that we “are instructed sufficiently that [we] know good from evil” (2 Nephi 2:5).

We progress or we are held back in life within the limits imposed by spiritual and natural laws that govern all the universe. We sometimes wonder: If the plan really is the great plan of happiness, why must we struggle to find fullness of it in mortal life?

If you expect to find only ease and peace and bliss during act 2, you surely will be frustrated. You will understand little of what is going on and why things are permitted to be as they are.

Remember this! The line “And they all lived happily ever after” is never written into the second act. That line belongs in the third act, when the mysteries are solved and everything is put right. The Apostle Paul was right when he said, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19).

Until you have a broad perspective of the eternal nature of this great drama, you won’t make much sense out of the inequalities in life. Some are born with so little and others with so much. Some are born in poverty, with handicaps, with pain, with suffering. Some experience premature death, even innocent children. There are the brutal, unforgiving forces of nature and the brutality of man to man. We have seen a lot of that recently.

Do not suppose that God willfully causes that which, for his own purposes, he permits. When you know the plan and purpose of it all, even these things will manifest a loving Father in Heaven.