Here it is the middle of January and already we may feel like a failure because we had goals to improve ourselves or to do some specific things differently and we are still going on each day the same in and same out. Don't despair! We need to remember to just do our best each day and call it done. We've heard it many times: The past is gone, the future isn't here yet, so today is all you have in which to live. Needless to say, there are challenges to our days and these seemingly get in the way of what we were planning to accomplish. Just take what comes. Do our best with it.
Faith Precedes the Miracle, by Spencer W. Kimball, is an easy-to-read book that addresses many concerns in life. Below is a quote from his book to help our perspective on living and enduring trials that come our way.
“If we looked at mortality as the whole of existence, then pain, sorrow, failure, and short life would be calamity. But if we look upon life as an eternal thing stretching far into the premortal past and on into the eternal post-death future, then all happenings may be put in proper perspective”
Is there not wisdom in His [God’s] giving us trials that we might rise above them, responsibilities that we might achieve, work to harden our muscles, sorrows to try our souls? Are we not exposed to temptations to test our strength, sickness that we might learn patience, death that we might be immortalized and glorified?
If all the sick for whom we pray were healed, if all the righteous were protected and the wicked destroyed, the whole program of the Father would be annulled and the basic principle of the gospel, free agency, would be ended. No man would have to live by faith.
If joy and peace and rewards were instantaneously given the doer of good, there could be no evil—all would do good but not because of the rightness of doing good. There would be no test of strength, no development of character, no growth of powers, no free agency, only satanic controls.
Being human, we would expel from our lives physical pain and mental anguish and assure ourselves of continual ease and comfort, but if we were to close the doors upon sorrow and distress, we might be excluding our greatest friends and benefactors. Suffering can make saints of people as they learn patience, long-suffering, and self-mastery. The sufferings of our Savior were part of his education."
Elder Orson F. Whitney wrote: “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude, and humility. … It is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire.”
Okay, so back to our earth school day--what can we learn today? What can we do with this day?
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