From: Sheila Hull
"THIS TO SHALL PASS AWAY"
If I can endure for this minute whatever is happening to me,
No matter how heavy my heart is or how "dark" the moment my be-
If I can remain calm and quiet with all my world crashing about me,
Secure in the knowledge that God loves me
when everyone else seems to doubt me-
If I can but keep on believing what I know in my heart to be true,
That "darkness will fade with the morning"
and that this This Will Pass Away,Too-
Then nothing in life can defeat me
for as long as this knowledge remains
I can suffer whatever is happening
for I know God will break
"all the chains"
That are binding me tight
in "The Darkness"
and trying to fill me with fear-
For there is No Night
Without Dawning
and I know that "My Morning"
is near.
--- HELEN TEINER RICE
THE MONUMENT
God
before He sent His children to earth
gave each one of them
a very carefully selected package
of problems
These,
he promised, smiling
are yours alone. No one else
may have the blessings
these problems will bring you,
and only you
have the special talents and abilities
that will be needed
to make these problems
your servants.
Now go down to your birth
and to your forgetfulness.
Know that I love you beyond measure.
These problems that I give you
are a symbol of that love.
The monument you make of your life
will be a symbol of your love for Me.
Your Father
--- Anonymous
Patient endurance permits us to cling to our faith in the Lord and our
faith in His timing when we are being tossed about by the surf of
circumstance. Even when a seeming undertow grasps us, somehow in the
tumbling we are being carried forward, though battered and bruised.
--- Neal A. Maxwell, Men and Women of Christ, p. 70
A good friend, who knows whereof he speaks, has observed of trials, "If
it's fair, it is not a true trial!" That is, without the added presence of
some inexplicableness and some irony and injustice, the experience may not
stretch us or lift us sufficiently. The crucifixion of Christ was clearly
the greatest injustice in human history, but the Savior bore up under it
with majesty and indescribable valor.
--- Neal A. Maxwell, All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience, p. 30-31
Just when all seems to be going right, challenges often come in multiple
doses applied simultaneously. When those trials are not consequences of
your disobedience, they are evidence that the Lord feels you are prepared
to grow more (see Prov. 3:11-12). He therefore gives you experiences that
stimulate growth, understanding, and compassion which polish you for your
everlasting benefit. To get you from where you are to where He wants you to
be requires a lot of stretching, and generally entails discomfort.
--- Richard G. Scott, Conference, Oct 1995
This life is an experience in profound trust in Jesus Christ, trust in His
teachings, trust in our capacity as led by the Holy Spirit to obey those
teachings for happiness now and for a purposeful, supremely happy eternal
existence. To trust means to obey willingly without knowing the end from
the beginning (see Prov. 3:5-7). To produce fruit, your trust in the Lord
must be more powerful and enduring than your confidence in your own
personal feelings and experience.
To exercise faith is to trust that the Lord knows what He is doing with you
and that He can accomplish it for your eternal good even though you cannot
understand how He can possibly do it. We are like infants in our
understanding of eternal matters and their impact on us here in mortality.
Yet at times we act as if we knew it all. When you pass through trials for
His purposes, as you trust Him, exercise faith in Him, He will help you.
That support will generally come step by step, a portion at a time. While
you are passing through each phase, the pain and difficulty that comes from
being enlarged will continue. If all matters were immediately resolved at
your first petition, you could not grow. Your Father in Heaven and His
Beloved Son love you perfectly. They would not require you to experience a
moment more of difficulty than is absolutely needed for your personal
benefit or for that of those you love.
--- Richard G. Scott, Conference, Oct 1995
My brothers and sisters, I should like to say something that might be
helpful to those among us who are weighed down with trials and difficulties
and disappointments and tribulations, and to them I say, "Doubt not, fear
not."
The gospel of Jesus Christ embraces every principle, every law, and every
ordinance necessary for us to meet any condition in life and for the
ultimate success of each of us. ...He taught that by conformance to the
plan of our Father, given through Jesus Christ, each of us can achieve a
divine destiny.
It is the only plan by which genuine peace of mind can be found. Indeed, it
is the only plan that leads men to salvation and exaltation. This plan was
presented to us in our preexistent state, and each of us gladly accepted
it. As part of it, we understood that in mortality we would most likely
experience sorrow as well as joy, pain as well as comfort, disappointment
along with success, sickness as well as health. Because it is necessary for
our development, the Lord permits the bitter to be mixed with the sweet. He
knows that our individual faith must be tested in adversity as well as in
serenity. Otherwise, that faith may not be sufficiently developed when a
condition arises that can be met through faith alone.
--- Elder Ray L. Christiansen, Conference, Apr 1969
I don't know all the reasons the Lord tries us in this life, but there are
two or three that come to mind. First, I think he wants to know whom he can
trust. The Lord found he could trust Abraham because he was willing to
offer his own son as a sacrifice if that was what the Lord wanted. Many
thought that Zion's Camp was a tragic waste of time, until it was later
demonstrated that the Lord used this ordeal to find whom he could trust. He
wanted to know who had roots of faith and testimony that reached deep into
the ground and who had such shallow roots that the first wind of adversity
would blow them over.
Secondly, the Lord tells us in the Doctrine and Covenants section 122 that
adversity came to Joseph Smith to give him experience. There is something
about the eternal purpose of life that requires us to meet and experience
trial and sorrow as we seek to overcome, for the Lord has told us also, ".
. . for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet. . . "
(D&C 29:39.)
Thirdly, I believe that only through such experiences can a person develop
true charity. And I mean by charity the pure love of Christ.
--- Loren C. Dunn, Conference, Apr 1974
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