All About Patterns and Strategies

I’ve been playing a brain game on lumosity.com called Route of Sprout. The object of the game is to move a seed along a path to a planting hole. Bugs on the path must be moved out of the way before the seed can be moved and all this has to be done in a set number of moves. The position and number of bugs change with each game as well as the style of the pathway. When I first started to play this game, I  started by moving the bugs out of the way hoping I had enough moves left to get the seed to the planting hole but I almost always ran out of moves before reaching the goal. Initially, I didn’t understand the strategy but as I continued to practice the game I began to see a pattern emerge. I learned that the shortest route was not necessarily the best route. The best route was always the one with the fewest bugs. Once I saw the pattern, I could find the optimal route every time and solve it quickly as well.

 As I mastered this pattern, I saw similarities to another pattern in life. Let’s say for an example, keeping the commandments. The best route back to our Heavenly Father is not necessarily the short easy route. The best route is the one he lays out for us to follow because there are fewer “bugs” in the road. We are certainly free to try other routes but if we spend our days trying to do it our way, we simply won’t find the optimal route with the fewest bugs. Additionally, doing it our way creates the risk of becoming trapped by the bugs unable to find a way out. We sometimes don’t understand the reasons for a particular commandment, in other words we don’t see the pattern, but even if we don’t initially understand, we will eventually come to see the strategy behind it if we persist in living the commandment anyway. I’m grateful the Lord is patient with us. Like the game that I can reset so I can keep practicing and improving, repentance allows us to start again as often as needed in order to recognize and learn the Lord’s patterns and strategies for living them.