I am delighted to be with you tonight, my
brothers and sisters, to partake of the spirit
that is here and of that marvelous music.
I wish you knew how much as a generation you
inspire those of us who have the privilege
of working with you.
I want you to know that I regard you highly—collectively
and all here whom I know individually–and
have great expectations for you.
The highest compliment I can pay to you is
that God has placed you here and now at this
time to serve in his kingdom; so much is about
to happen in which you will be involved and
concerning which you will have some great
influence.
It is because you will face some remarkable
challenges in your time; it is because the
Church has ceased to be in the eyes of men
a mere cultural oddity in the Mountain West
and is now, therefore, a global church—a
light which can no longer be hid; it is because
you have a rendezvous with destiny that will
involve some soul stretching and some pain
that I have chosen to speak to you tonight
about the implications of two things we accept
sometimes quite casually.
These realities are that God loves us and,
loving us, has placed us here to cope with
challenges which he will place before us.
I’m not sure we can always understand the
implications of his love, because his love
will call us at times to do things we may
wonder about, and we may be confronted with
circumstances we would rather not face.
I believe with all my heart that because God
loves us there are some particularized challenges
that he will deliver to each of us.
He will customize the curriculum for each
of us in order to teach us the things we most
need to know.
He will set before us in life what we need,
not always what we like.
And this will require us to accept with all
our hearts—particularly your generation—the
truth that there is divine design in each
of our lives and that you have rendezvous
to keep, individually and collectively.
God knows even now what the future holds for
each of us.
In one of his revelations these startling
words appear, as with so many revelations
that are too big, I suppose, for us to manage
fully: “In the presence of God, . . . all
things . . . are manifest, past, present,
and future, and are continually before the
Lord."
The future “you” is before him now.
He knows what it is he wishes to bring to
pass in your life.
He knows the kind of remodeling in your life
and in mine that he wishes to achieve.
Now, this will require us to believe in that
divine design and at times to accept the truth
which came to Joseph Smith wherein he was
reminded that his suffering would be “but
a small moment."
I’d like to talk to you about some of those
small moments that will come your way in life
and that come to each of us.
Let me begin by reminding you that we so blithely
say in the Church that life is a school, a
testing ground.
It is true, even though it is trite.
What we don’t accept are the implications
of that true teaching—at least as fully
as we should.
One of the implications is that the tests
that we face are real.
They are not going to be things we can do
with one hand tied behind our backs.
They are real enough that if we meet them
we shall know that we have felt them, because
we will feel them deeply and keenly and pervasively.
Christ on the cross gave out the cry “My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
That cry on the cross is an indication that
the very best of our Father’s children found
the trials so real, the tests so exquisite
and so severe, that he cried out—not in
doubt of his Father’s reality, but wondering
“why” at that moment of agony—for Jesus
felt so alone.
James Talmage advises us that in ways you
and I cannot understand, God somehow withdrew
his immediate presence from the Son so that
Jesus Christ’s triumph might be truly complete.
And that it might be that experience which only He could undergo for us all.
From Gethsemane and Calvary there are many
lessons we need to apply to our own lives.
We, too, at times may wonder if we have been
forgotten and forsaken.
Hopefully, we will do as the Master did and
acknowledge that God is still there and never
doubt that sublime reality–even though we
may wonder and might desire to avoid some
of life’s experiences.
We may at times, if we are not careful, try
to pray away pain or what seems like an impending
tragedy, but which is, in reality, an opportunity.
We must do as Jesus did in that respect—also
preface our prayers by saying, “If it be
possible,” let the trial pass from us—by
saying, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but
as thou wilt,” and bowing in a sense of
serenity to our Father in heaven’s wisdom,
because at times God will not be able to let
us pass by a trial or a challenge.
If we were allowed to bypass certain trials,
everything that had gone on up to that moment
in our lives would be wiped out.
It is because he loves us that at times he
will not intercede as we may wish him to.
That, too, we learn from Gethsemane and from
Calvary.
It is interesting to me, brothers and sisters,
to note that among the qualities of a saint
is the capacity to develop patience and to
cope with the things that life inflicts upon
us.
That capacity brings together two prime attributes—patience
and endurance.
These are qualities, in the process of giving
service to mankind that most people reject
or undervalue.
Most people would gladly serve mankind if
somehow they could get it over with once,
preferably with applause and recognition.
But, for the sake of righteousness, to endure,
to be patient in the midst of affliction,
in the midst of being misunderstood, and in
the midst of suffering—that is sainthood!
I am struck quite forcibly by the idea that
no man has yet become President of the church
of him who suffered so much who has not himself
undergone some special challenges previous
to that moment.
The challenges vary from President to President,
but the ways in which these men have coped
with these challenges are strikingly similar.
If we use Jesus as a model in the midst of
the suffering about which we’re speaking,
then it is also noteworthy that even in the
midst of his exquisite agony he managed to
have compassion for those nearby who were
then suffering much, though much less than
he—those on the adjoining crosses or about
him below the cross.
How marvelous it is when we see people who
are not so swallowed up in their own suffering
that they cannot still manage sympathy, even
empathy, for those who suffer far, far less.
How many of us here may have undergone the
embarrassment of being comforted by those
who had more reason to be comforted than we?
Yet we recognize in that act of theirs a saintliness
to which we would so gladly aspire.
If we at times wonder if our own agendum for
life deliver to us challenges that seem unique,
it would be worth our remembering that, when
we feel rejected, we are members of the church
of him who was most rejected by his very own
with no cause for rejection.
If at times we feel manipulated, we are disciples
of him whom the establishment of his day sought
to manipulate.
If we at times feel unappreciated, we are
worshipers of him who gave to us the Atonement—that
marvelous, selfless act, the central act of
all human history—unappreciated, at least
fully, even among those who gathered about
his feet while the very process of the Atonement
was underway.
If we sometimes feel misunderstood by those
about us, even those we minister to, so did
he, much more deeply and pervasively than
we.
And if we love and there is no reciprocity
for our love, we worship him who taught us
and showed us love that is unconditional,
for we must love even when there is no reciprocity.
Most of our suffering, brothers and sisters,
actually comes because of our sins.
Isn’t it marvelous that Jesus Christ, who
did not have to endure that kind of suffering
because he was sin-free, nevertheless took
upon himself the sins of all of us and experienced
an agony so exquisite we cannot comprehend
it?
I don’t know how many people have lived
on the earth for sure, but demographers say
between 30 and 67 billion.
If you were to collect the agony for your
own sins and I for mine, and multiply it by
that number, we can only shudder at what the
sensitive, divine soul of Jesus must have
experienced in taking upon himself the awful
arithmetic of the sins of all of us—an act
which he did selflessly and voluntarily.
If it is also true (in some way we don’t
understand) that the cavity which suffering
carves into our souls will one day also be
the receptacle of joy, how infinitely greater
Jesus’ capacity for joy, when he said, after
his resurrection, “Behold, my joy is full.”
How very, very full, indeed, his joy must
have been!
I should like, therefore, to speak to you
on the premise that it is a part of discipleship
for us to be prepared for the kind of rigors
that Jesus always leveled his disciples.
He said, “My people must be tried in all
things, that they may be prepared to receive
the glory that I have for them, even the glory
of Zion; and he that will not bear chastisement
is not worthy of my kingdom."
That is hard doctrine.
Peter made it even more rigorous.
Peter didn’t want us to take any credit
upon ourselves for the suffering we endure
because of our own mistakes.
He was willing to see us take credit for the
suffering we endure because of discipleship,
but not because of our own stupidity or our
own sin.
Then Moroni reminded us, “For ye receive
no witness until after the trial of your faith."
That’s the rigorous path of discipleship,
brothers and sisters, about which I wish to
speak at least in this one dimension tonight,
giving you some examples, if I may.
If God chooses to teach us the things we most
need to learn because he loves us, and if
he seeks to tame our souls and gentle us in
the way we most need to be tamed and most
need to be gentled, it follows that he will
customize the challenges he gives us and individualize
them so that we will be prepared for life
in a better world by his refusal to take us
out of this world, even though we are not
of it.
In the eternal ecology of things we must pray,
therefore, not that things be taken from us,
but that God’s will be accomplished through
us.
What, therefore, may seem now to be mere unconnected
pieces of tile will someday, when we look
back, take form and pattern, and we will realize
that God was making a mosaic.
For there is in each of our lives this kind
of divine design, this pattern, this purpose
that is in the process of becoming, which
is continually before the Lord but which for
us, looking forward, is sometimes perplexing.
I should like to suggest some traps into which
we can fall, if we are not careful, as we
try to meet the challenges that life delivers
at our doorsteps.
The first temptation that we must resist,
brothers and sisters, is the Jonah response,
in which we sometimes think we can escape
the calls that come to us, that we can somehow
run away from the realities that will press
in upon us.
Jonah, you recall, had been called to go to
Nineveh.
He didn’t want to go to that urban center
that was so big.
We are told it took the people hours to walk
across that city.
He tried to find a ship going to Tarshish.
He “paid the fare thereof,” hoping to
leave the presence of the Lord.
You and I will one day know, if we do not
know now, there is no way we can escape from
God’s love, because it is infinite.
However many times in our lives we might rather
go to a Tarshish than a Nineveh, he will insist
that we go to Nineveh, and we must pay “the
fare thereof.”
Recently a young man was called to his Nineveh.
The president of the Salt Lake mission home,
President Rawson, told Sister Maxwell and
me that not too long ago a young man came
in on a Saturday to the Salt Lake mission
home and said, “President, may I see you?”
The president said, “Surely, son, come into
my office.”
He came in and said, “I need a blessing.”
“Why do you need a blessing?”
“I need a blessing because I am the only
member of my family who is a member of the
Church.
Yesterday, when I went to leave home, one
parent told me never to come back again, the
other wouldn’t speak to me, and the only
person who said goodbye was my little brother,
who came to the front gate to say goodbye
to me.
I’m on my way overseas and I need a blessing.”
Now, brothers and sisters, that is the kind
of devotion we must have in preparation for
the Ninevehs of life to which we are called.
However rigorous the circumstances are, we
must, as this young man did, be willing to
go, to trust and to surrender ourselves to
our Father in heaven, who knows why in his
divine plans it must be so.
A second trap into which we can fall is the
naïveté that grows out of our not realizing
that the adversary will press particularly
in the areas of our vulnerabilities.
It ought not to surprise us that this will
be so.
The things that we would most like to avoid,
therefore, will often be the things that confront
us most directly and most sharply.
Some of you may recall that the British military
planners who built the fortress of Singapore,
which was supposed to be invincible, fixed
the guns of Singapore so that they would fire
only seaward.
The Japanese very cleverly came from behind
on land.
Churchill and others were stunned that this
citadel and fortress had fallen so quietly
and so simply.
Some of us have guns that fire only in one
direction.
We are vulnerable, and our vulnerabilities
will be probed by the vicissitudes of life.
One of the great advantages of life in the
Church (in which the gospel is at the center)
is that we can overcome these vulnerabilities;
otherwise, we shall be taken by surprise and
swiftly.
A third trap into which we can fall, if we
are not careful, is to fail to notice that
at the center of many of our challenges is
pride, is ego.
In most emotional escalations with which I
am familiar, if one goes to the very center
of them, there is ego asserting itself relentlessly.
The only cure for rampant ego is humility,
and this is why circumstances often bring
to us a kind of compelled or forced humility—so
that we may recover our equilibrium.
Humility can help us to dampen our pride.
Ironically, for those of us who most need
to serve to develop our capacity to love,
our very egos often make us unapproachable
so far as others are concerned.
We, therefore, are underused and we wonder
why.
And this is typical of the trials that we
impose upon ourselves.
A fourth trap into which we can fall is that
we may at times assume that the plan of salvation
requires merely that we endure and survive
when, in fact, as is always the case with
the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is required
of us, not only that we endure, but also that
we endure well, that we exhibit “grace under
pressure.”
This is necessary, not only so that our own
passage through the trial can be a growth
experience, but also because (more than we
know) there are always people watching to
see if we can cope, who therefore may resolve
to venture forth and to cope themselves.
Every time we navigate safely on the strait
and narrow way, there are other ships that
are lost which can find their way because
of our steady light.
A fifth trap, and a major one, is the trap
of self-pity.
One man has said that “hell is being frozen
in self-pity.”
Indeed, at times when we think our lot is
hard or when we feel our selves misunderstood,
it will be so easy for us to indulge ourselves
in feeling some self-pity.
A contrasting episode comes to us out of ancient
Greece: Several hundred Spartans were holding
the pass at Thermopylae, that narrow pass,
and the Persians came in overwhelming numbers
and urged the Spartans to surrender.
Hoping to intimidate them further, the Persians
sent emissaries to the Spartans, saying they
had so many archers in their army they could
darken the sky with their arrows.
The Spartans said, “So much the better.
We shall fight in the shade.”
Now, brothers and sisters, the disciple has
to be ready to fight in the shade of circumstance.
One of the ways we can have perspective that
will permit us to fight in the shade of circumstances
is to read the scriptures and have involvement—intellectually
and spiritually—with the case studies in
the scriptures of those men and women who
have coped, and coped successfully, who have
undergone far more than you and I are asked
to undergo.
When we understand these models, we may then
understand that God is totally serious about
his purpose “to bring to pass the immortality
and eternal life of man,” that his chief
concerns are not real estate and political
dominion, but the growth of souls, the celestializing
of the souls with whom he works.
I am one of those, for instance, who does
not believe the Mormon colonies in Mexico
and Canada had much to do in the Lord’s
eyes with real estate or physical empire,
but I feel rather that these colonies were
established for the preparation of a people.
I call your attention to the fact that two
members of the First Presidency and the wife
of President Kimball have come out of those
colonies in Mexico and Canada—individuals
prepared beforehand for the mighty roles they
now carry on in the kingdom.
I don’t think God’s too interested in
real estate.
He owns it all anyway.
He does seem to be incredibly interested in
what happens to us individually and will place
us in those circumstances where we have the
most opportune chances to grow and to carry
out our purposes.
A sixth trap into which we can fall quite
easily, brothers and sisters, is the trap
in which we sense that something special is
happening in our lives but are not able to
sort it out with sufficient precision and
clarity that we can articulate it to someone
else.
That is so often true of the gospel.
Its truths are too powerful for us to manage
on occasion.
Let me give you this simple illustration of
how we can know something and yet not be able
to communicate it fully without the help of
the Spirit.
If I were to bring one of you into this hall
and if, instead of all of you, it were filled
with fifteen thousand mothers and if I were
to say to you, “Somewhere in that audience
is your mother; find her,” you could do
it, and I suspect it wouldn’t take you very
many minutes.
But if I said to you, “Wait outside.
There are fifteen thousand mothers in there
and one of them is your mother.
Now, you describe her to me with sufficient
precision and clarity so that I can go find
her,” you couldn’t do it.
You would still know what she looked like,
but tongue could not transmit what you knew.
It is that way often with the gospel.
That is why we are so in need of the Spirit–so
that knowledge can arc like electricity from
point to point, aided and impelled by the
Spirit—aid without which we are simply not
articulate enough to speak of all the things
which we know.
It would be interesting, for instance, if
I were to ask one of you to describe to the
satisfaction of all here the color yellow.
Yellow, of course, is a primary color, but
it would be difficult for you to describe
it to us without comparing it with other colors.
Yet you have no difficulty recognizing yellow
when you see it.
We know more than we can tell!
Sometimes the things we know take the form
of knowledge about what is happening to us
in life in which we sense purpose, in which
we sense divine design, but which we cannot
speak about with full articulateness.
There are simply moments of mute comprehension
and of mute certitude.
We need to pay attention when these moments
come to us, because God often gives us the
assurances we need but not necessarily the
capacity to transmit these assurances to anyone
else.
I would like to share with you at this moment
a highly personal experience.
I will not mention the name of the man involved.
I mention the experience only because of one
of my own tendencies (those on the stand and
elsewhere who know me know that I am often
too verbal and silence does not come easily
to me).
Fortunately, on this occasion there was a
kind of mute comprehension on my part that
the most important thing I could do was to
be still.
A few days after April conference, a very
bright, able professional man called my secretary
for an appointment.
Fortunately she gave it to him, and fortunately
it was of sufficient duration that there was
time for the chemistry of this experience
to operate.
He came in and we greeted each other.
I, frankly, was not sure of the purpose of
his visit.
I assumed it might even be that he had come
to complain about something.
There are portions of our time as General
Authorities that are given over to being ombudsmen.
But I said little and sat down.
I resisted the temptation to fill the silence
that then ensued.
Tears welled up, filling his eyes.
It seemed to me we must have sat there for
ten minutes, but I am sure it was only three
or four.
I kept still, resisting the natural temptation
to rush in with supporting words, and simply
let the Spirit operate.
Then out it came—a marvelous, manly confession,
in which he said for him to become active
in the kingdom again it was necessary that
he set certain things right.
Over the years he felt he had been unfair
to me and unkind to me, and he wanted to come
and to ask for forgiveness.
I again largely resisted the temptation, which
by then was strong, to rush in with some quick
reassurances that might put him at ease.
As thoughts tumbled on thoughts and verbalizations
on verbalizations, this sweet man cleansed
his soul.
Indeed, I had not felt injured by him.
I was not aware of his concerns, but it would
have been folly for me to have so said before
there was full closure in the matter at hand.
He is a marvelous, sweet man.
I admire his courage.
He said even that morning he had wondered
if he could come, or if he shouldn’t cancel
his appointment.
I love him.
We embraced and have stayed in close contact
since.
He is able and is making marvelous progress
in the kingdom.
I’ll always be grateful for that sensing
of mute comprehension that something special
was about to happen which I couldn’t describe
but in which my role for that occasion was
mostly to be still and to listen.
There are times when life will visit us with
challenges in which we will have a mute comprehension
of what is underway but cannot transmit it
fully to someone else.
A seventh trap, brothers and sisters, is that
some of us neglect to develop multiple forces
of satisfaction.
When one of the wells upon which we draw dries
up through death, loss or status, disaffection,
or physical ailment, we then find ourselves
very thirsty because, instead of having multiple
sources of satisfaction in our lives, we have
become too dependent upon this or upon that.
How important it is to the symmetry of our
souls that we interact with all the gospel
principles and with all the Church programs,
so that we do not become so highly specialized
that, if we are deprived of one source of
satisfaction, indeed we are in difficulty.
It is possible to be incarcerated within the
prison of one principle.
We are less vulnerable if our involvements
with the kingdom are across the board.
We are less vulnerable if we care deeply about
many principles—not simply a few.
An eighth trap to be avoided, brothers and
sisters, is the tendency we have—rather
humanly, rather understandably—to get ourselves
caught in peering through the prism of the
present and then distorting our perspective
about things.
Time is of this world; it is not of eternity.
We can, if we are not careful, feel the pressures
of time and see things in a distorted way.
How important it is that we see things as
much as possible through the lens of the gospel
with its eternal perspectives.
I should like, if I may, to share with you
on this point the fine writing of your own
A. Lester Allen, a dean and scientist on this
campus.
This is what I have come to call the “Allen
Analogy” about time.
Let me read you these lines, if I may.
Their application will be obvious.
Dean Allen writes:
Suppose, for instance, that we imagine a “being”
moving onto our earth whose entire life-span
is only 1/100 of a second.
Ten thousand “years” for him, generation
after generation, would be only one second
of our time.
Suppose this imaginary being comes up to a
quiet pond in the forest where you are seated.
You have just tossed in a rock and are watching
the ripples.
A leaf is fluttering from the sky and a bird
is swooping over the water.
He would find everything absolutely motionless.
Looking at you, he would say: “In all recorded
history nothing has changed.
My father and his father before him have seen
that everything is absolutely still.
This creature called man has never had a heartbeat
and has never breathed.
The water is standing in stationary waves
as if someone had thrown a rock into it; it
seems frozen.
A leaf is suspended in the air, and a bird
has stopped right over the middle of the pond.
There is no movement.
Gravity is suspended.”
The concept of time in this imaginary being,
so different from ours, would give him an
entirely different perspective of what we
call reality.
On the other hand, picture another imaginary
creature for whom one “second” of his
time is 10,000 years of our time.
What would the pond be like to him?
By the time he sat down beside it, taking
15,000 of our years to do so, the pond would
have vanished.
Individual human beings would be invisible,
since our entire life-span would be only 1/100
of one of his “seconds.”
The surface of the earth would be undulating
as mountains are built up and worn down.
The forest would persist but a few minutes
and then disappear.
His concept of “reality” would be much
different than our own.
That’s the most clever way I have seen time
and intimations of eternity dealt with.
It is very important that we not assume the
perspective of mortality in making the decisions
that bear on eternity!
We need the perspectives of the gospel to
make decisions in the context of eternity.
We need to understand we cannot do the Lord’s
work in the world’s way.
Now, brothers and sisters, may I prepare to
close with these thoughts: The Church is fully
Christ-centered. It is really the only Christ-centered church left upon the earth if one wishes to get particular
about the nature of a Christ-centered church.
The Church is also Christ-powered, and it
is also designed to help its members become
more Christlike.
Since the gospel of Jesus Christ focuses on
the truths that deal with everlasting things
and not on obsolescent realities, it is very
important for us, brothers and sisters, to
recognize that the truths in which we traffic
as members of the kingdom pertain to eternity
as well as to this life.
I am surprised (I would be amused if the cost
were not so great) that people think they
can remove the foundations of our social structure—things like work, chastity, and family and then wonder
why other things crumble.
You can’t remove the foundation of a building
while standing inside and not be hit with
falling plaster.
We are now in the interesting position in
the kingdom of trying to warn about what is
happening in the world and, at the same time,
of keeping ourselves personally secure.
We must be Christ-centered individually.
We must have his and God’s power to do our
work, and we must take seriously the challenge
of becoming more Christlike.
You’re soon going to go out into a world
full of marshmallow men.
Like the act of putting a finger into a marshmallow,
there is no core in these men, there is no
center, and when one removes his finger, the
marshmallow resumes its former shape.
We are in a world of people who want to yield
to everything—to every fad and to every
fashion.
It is incredibly important that we be committed
to the core—committed to those things that
matter, about which our Father in heaven has
leveled with us through his Son, Jesus Christ,
and his prophets.
I saw an interesting cartoon not too long
ago that bears on this point of marshmallow
men.
It showed two multicolored desert lizards
conversing.
One said to the other, “Of course you’re
going through an identity crisis.
You’re a chameleon.”
Of course the world is going through an identity
crisis.
Of course it’s adrift: it’s got no anchor.
It does not have core principles upon 
which to decide all other things.
My son and I were amused by a sign we saw recently in New York,
in which, I'm sure quite sincerely, those who posted the sign were attempting
to say something significant. Their message was that their principles never changed, but their beliefs did.
I am not a logician, but I assume that's only possible if your beliefs are not related to your principles.
I am grateful that our beliefs are related
to the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I am grateful that God has told us that we
must be ready for the trials that life will
bring our way.
I speak to this generation with some sense
of vicarious anticipation in your behalf of
what lies ahead—urging you to pour out your
hearts in supplication and prayer.
There is nothing more powerful than prayer,
nothing more masculine or more feminine (at
the same time) than prayer.
There was more power processed and expended
on that single night in Gethsemane, in that
small garden, than all the armies and navies
have ever expended in all the battles on the
land and sea and in the air in all of human history. There was more good done, in that garden, that night,
because of prayer and because of suffering than have been achieved by all the social, political, and economic
programs that one sees strewn down the corridor of human history.
The catalyst of prayer helped Jesus to cope
with suffering, and by his suffering he emancipated
all men from death and made possible eternal
life.
This cardinal fact about the central act of
human history, the Atonement, ought to give
us pause, therefore, as we face our challenges
individually.
I believe it was George Macdonald who said, "We never can really get close to another person except by loving
them." And that the giving of love is more significant than the receiving of love, even though we all need to receive it.
This same Macdonald reminded us that the only door out of the dungeon of self is the love of one’s neighbor.
How proud we ought to be, in a quiet way,
that we are members of the church of the most
selfless being who ever lived.
How proud we ought to be to belong to a church
that makes specific demands of us and gives
us specific things to do and marks the strait
and narrow way, lest we fall off one side
of the precipice or the other.
I am so grateful that God loves us enough
to teach us specifically.
Had secularists written the Ten Commandments,
they might have said, “Thou shalt not be
a bad person.”
Note what the Ten Commandments say: “Thou
shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, thou
shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God
in vain, thou shalt not commit adultery,”
and so on.
The gospel of Jesus Christ is specific because
God cares specifically for each of us and,
caring for us, will mark the way carefully
lest we fall out of happiness.
A vague creed is fitted only for a vague God.
We have a Father who loves us specifically
and gives us things to do and, because he
loves us, will cause us, at times, to have
our souls stretched and to be fitted for a
better world by coping with life in this world.
May God bless us with that kind of commitment,
with the capacity to be serious disciples
and to accept both the agendum that he has
prepared for each of us because he loves us
and the curriculum, prepared for each of us,
which he has customized to teach us the things
we most need to know, because he loves us.
There is a man I hope someday to meet—a
brother of yours and mine in the kingdom.
He lives somewhere behind the Iron Curtain.
Another man, a priesthood leader behind the
Iron Curtain, was told that there was such
a man, who had not seen another member of
the Church for many years.
This good brother, moved by the Spirit, saved
his money (which he didn’t have much of),
made his way through the red tape of crossing
borders, and found this brother of yours and
mine; he learned that he who was found had
not seen another member of the Church for
over twenty years.
And when the man who was the finder indicated
that it was possible, because he had been
so authorized, to give this brother a patriarchal
blessing, this good brother demurred momentarily
until he got the tithing which he had saved
for over twenty years and gave it to this
other man so that he would be fully worthy
of that blessing!
I don’t know what the divine design is in
the challenge of that kind of solitude.
I know that this man, our brother, is meeting
that challenge.
Some of us will have to be most courageous,
not when we’re alone, but when we’re in
a crowd.
Whatever the form the test takes, we must
be willing to pass it.
We must reach breaking points without breaking.
We must be willing, if necessary, to give
up our lives—not because we have a disdain
for life as some do, but even though we love
life—because we are the servants of him
who did that in such an infinite way for all
of us.
I testify to you in the solemnity of my soul
that we are prophet-led, that this is the
church of Jesus Christ, presided over by a
prophet who himself knows a great deal about
suffering. Who has been sweetened, and deepened by that experience.
We are all the servants of him who suffered
most that we might have with him a fullness
of joy.
May we be committed to that task this day
and always I pray in the name of him whose
church this is, even Jesus Christ.
Amen.
