- someone my age dying of cancer and saying goodbye to her missionary son over Facetime
- injury, repeated surgeries and loss of income and possible employment
- aging and loneliness
- sudden death of a husband
- brain cancer in a young husband and father
- inability to conceive and bear children
- no marriage prospects
- financial difficulties and inadequate income
- chronic illness and pain
- discord between parents and children
- loss of a second husband to brain cancer
- parents who mourn because their children have left the church
- pornography addiction and recovery
- loss of employment in an unfair way
- people choosing to have their names removed from membership in the church
- same sex issues
- singleness
- mental illness
- abuse of children and spouse
- dementia
- immorality, multiple short-term relationships, repeated heartbreak
- minimum wage jobs with insufficient income
- marital problems
- being an orphan with little support
- addiction, drug and alcohol abuse
- loss of hope and faith
Where do people turn in these times of trial? Where do they look for comfort, peace and solace? I'm reminded of the words of a favorite hymn by Emma Lou Thayne entitled Where can I Turn for Peace.
Where can I turn for peace?
Where is my solace
When other sources cease to make me whole?
When with a wounded heart, anger or malice,
I draw myself apart
Searching my soul?
Where, when my aching grows,
Where, when I languish,
Where in my need to know, where can I run?
Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?
Who, who can understand?
He, only One.
He answers privately,
Reaches my reaching
In my Gethsemane, Savior and Friend
Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching
Constant he is and kind,
Love without end.
Two points really resonate with me. The Savior answers privately and He reaches my reaching. BUT, I have to reach. I have to ask. I have to make the first move. I have to show some faith and trust and THEN He will answer. It may not be immediate, it may take some time, but He will answer in ways we sometimes couldn't even have imagined. We will answer us after we have shown our faith in Him.
This is tough work, but it is worth every ounce of time, energy, faith and hope that we can possible muster. Why?? Because the alternative is so much more bleak, more ridden with hopelessness and pain, despair and failure. We have a choice! We can reach toward Him or we cannot. We can go it on our own or we can ask for His help. It's pretty much that simple.
As I watch the ones I love go through the struggles (and more) listed above, it is interesting to me to watch which path they choose. I don't judge them since I don't know their complete circumstances or their hearts, but of course, I want to see them take the path that leads to Christ! I want them to reach out to Him. I want them to reach for Him so that He will answer them privately, in his own special way with answers to their prayers. His infinite atonement will help them! I know it will!
This talk given years ago from President James E. Faust sheds light on this topic and it is entitled "Refined in our Trials." He said: "There is a divine purpose in the adversities we encounter every day. They prepare, they purge, they purify, and thus they bless."
Elder Dallin H. Oaks spoke of this very thing in the last conference address entitled "Strengthened by the Atonement of Jesus Christ." If you are struggling with some burden, take 10 minutes to listen to this talk. It will help and it may provide some insight on how to access the Savior's atonement in dealing with adversities.
All of us have struggles at some point in our lives. All of us need the Savior, He who is mighty to save, to lift or to help carry the burdens we bear and to love us. I know He lives! I know He loves us! Our trials aren't because He doesn't love us and he wants to torture us, they are often because of natural occurrences in life (like natural disasters, sickness and cancer), the impact of choices of other people on our lives or because of our own choices or sins and the consequences those choices bring on ourselves and those around us. It is good for everyone to face adversity, especially if it causes introspection that enables us to open and honestly assess our lives. Because our Savior is "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" he knows how to succor us. He has been through it all and more than we will ever experience. Through our trials we become acquainted with God.
These quotes from Elder Oak's talk are especially powerful:
**Because of His atoning experience in mortality, Our Savior is able to comfort, heal, and strengthen all men and women everywhere, but I believe He does so only for those who seek Him and ask for His help.
**His Atonement also provides the opportunity to call upon Him who has experienced all of our mortal infirmities to give us the strength to bear the burdens or mortality. He knows our anguish, and He is there for us.
**One day all of these mortal burdens will pass away and there will be no more pain (see Revelation 21:4.) I pray that we will all understand the hope and strength of our Savior's Atonement: the assurance of immortality, the opportunity for eternal life, and the sustaining strength we can receive if only we will ask.
1 comment:
Thank you, Vonnie, for this post. I had not connected these two thoughts, which are intertwined: the Savior reaches our reaching (LDS hymn "Where Can I Turn for Peace?", and "we need to ask.," (Elder Oaks) in the October general conference just passed. Actually, they combine into the idea that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is our first principle, and that faith requires us to act. Therefore, faith requires action, which action is, in the hymn's words "reach" for the Savior. He then reaches our reaching, which is consistent with Elder Oaks admonition to ask. Thanks for the clarifying post.
vfr
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