During the past few months as I have watched videos of persons on the receiving end of unjust and unmerited vile and potentially provocative words and often injurious and even fatal assaults, I have literally lain awake at night rehearsing those situations and wondering how I would respond if I were to find myself in similar circumstances.
Could I, would I, follow the Master’s invitation to Come Follow Me and meekly turn the other cheek, or would I respond reflexively and impetuously as did the Savior’s chief disciple when he drew his sword and defended and retaliated?
As I have pondered past, present, and possible future adversity and injustices, two messages I’ve recently sought to digest have seemed like answers to my prayerful pleadings for guidance and strength.
Quotes from an article from the July 2020 Ensign entitled, “Surviving and Thriving Like the Pioneers“:
“The question is not whether we will be faithful when things go well; rather, will we be faithful when they don’t? Faith is faithfulness in uncertainty and disappointment, faithfulness not to get one’s way, faithfulness regardless of the outcome.”
“Our natural instinct understandably is to shrink from hardship, but it is a grave mistake for that to be life’s primary objective. That kind of thinking wrongly equates the pursuit of joy with the hollowness of ease. While that has some appeal, it is a deeply flawed strategy because suffering and joy are not incompatible but rather essential companions. You can suffer and never know joy, but you can’t have joy without suffering.”
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2020/07/surviving-and-thriving-like-the-pioneers?lang=eng
The second source of inspiration is Elder Jeffrey Holland’s 2008 BYU Devotional address entitled: “Lessons from Liberty Jail".
1- Everyone, including and perhaps ESPECIALLY the righteous, will be called upon to face trying times.
2- Just because difficult things happen, sometimes unfair and seemingly unjustified things, it does NOT mean that we are unrighteous, or that we are unworthy of blessings, or that God is disappointed in us.
3- In the midst of these difficult feelings, when one could be justifiably angry or reactionary or vengeful, wanting to return an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the Lord reminds us from the Liberty Jail Prison-Temple, that “the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only (or except) upon the principles of righteousness.... No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned.”
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/jeffrey-r-holland/lessons-liberty-jail/
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