"Trying to comprehend the trials and meaning of this life without understanding Heavenly Father’s marvelously encompassing plan of salvation is like trying to understand a three-act play while seeing only the second act. Fortunately, our knowledge of the Savior, Jesus Christ, and His Atonement helps us to endure our trials and to see purpose in suffering and to trust God for what we cannot comprehend....
"So often in life a deserved blessing is quickly followed by a needed stretching. Spiritual exhilaration may be quickly followed by a vexation or temptation. Were it otherwise, extended spiritual reveries or immunities from adversity might induce in us a regrettable forgetfulness of others in deep need. The sharp, side-by-side contrast of the sweet and the bitter is essential until the very end of this brief, mortal experience. Meanwhile, even routine, daily life provides sufficient sandpaper to smooth our crustiness and polish our rough edges, if we are meek....
"Part of enduring well consists of being meek enough, amid our suffering, to learn from our relevant experiences. Rather than simply passing through these things, they must pass through us and do so in ways which sanctify these experiences for our good (see D&C 122:7).
"Life is carefully designed to produce for us, if we are willing, a harvest of relevant and portable experience. But there is such a short growing season! The fields must be worked intensively amid droughts, late springs, and early frosts. For the disobedient and despairing who refuse to plant, plow, or harvest, theirs is not simply a 'winter of discontent' but a despair for all seasons. The indifferent and lackluster who work only on the surface of life will harvest little. Only for the perspiring and 'anxiously engaged' faithful will the harvest be manyfold (see Matt. 19:29)."
- Neal A. Maxwell, "Enduring Well," Ensign, April 1997, p. 7
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It's always thrilling to me to read Elder Maxwell's beautiful and thought-provoking writing. These four related segments from one of his talks speak of trials and suffering, and of the ways we can respond so those things are a blessing to us.
First of all, it's critical to view our mortal challenges in the broad expanse of eternity. This is only the short middle segment of a much broader and grander eternal existence. We are here to learn to "trust God for what we cannot comprehend" in our restricted vision.
The relationships between times of blessing or comfort, and times of trial and struggle, is good to contemplate. It's important to recognize the interplay of those events in our lives and understand the purpose for each. That will allow us to not just pass through trials, but have the trials pass through us to cleanse and purify in the process.
What a beautiful and profound analogy. A harvest is only reaped when great effort is invested. We must do our part to earn the bountiful harvest or "relevant and portable experience." I'm especially impressed by the portability of experience and knowledge; the ability to apply lessons from one challenge or trial to other situations is a great blessing.
(Compilation and commentary by David Kenison, Orem, Utah, 2017)
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