Each of you is a unique child of God. God knows you individually. He sends messages of encouragement, correction, and direction fitted to you and to your needs.
I perceive myself as rather uninhibited, with a certain mathematical facility and more interest in the broad aspect of a problem than the delicate nuances. I am more interested in discovering what is over the next rise than in assiduously cultivating the beautiful garden close at hand.
It is never too late to strengthen the foundation of faith. There is always time. With faith in the Savior, you can repent and plead for forgiveness. There is someone you can forgive. There is someone you can thank. There is someone you can serve and lift. You can do it wherever you are and however alone and deserted you may feel.
Discord or jealousy inhibits the ability of the Holy Ghost to teach us and inhibits our ability to receive light and truth. And the feelings of disappointment that invariably follow are the seeds of greater discord and faultfinding among those who expected a learning experience that did not come.
If we continue to seek learning to serve God and His children better, it is a blessing of great worth. If we begin to seek learning to exalt ourselves alone, it leads to selfishness and pride, which will take us away from eternal life.
The family unit is fundamental not only to society and to the Church, but to our hope for eternal life.
Let us do whatever is required to qualify for the Holy Ghost as our companion and then let us go forward fearlessly so that we will be given the powers to do whatever the Lord calls us to do.
Apparent contradictions between religion and science often have been the basis of bitter controversy. Such differences are to be expected as long as human understanding remains provisional and fragmentary.
If we look for human frailty in humans, we will always find it. When we focus on finding the frailties of those who hold priesthood keys, we run risks for ourselves. When we speak or write to others of such frailties, we put them at risk.
Because the Savior is a resurrected and glorified being, He is not physically with every one of His servants at every moment. But He is perfectly aware of them and their circumstance and able to intervene with His power.
The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ, and we learn about Him in its pages. We know that it has great power. It has the power to change lives. It has the power to convert. If you read it with an open heart, you will know that it is the word of God and that it is true.
When we struggle, as so many do, in grinding poverty, or when our enemies prevail against us, or when sickness is not healed, the enemy of our souls can send his evil message that there is no God or that if He exists He does not care about us.
We know the Lord makes His servants bold. The young boy Joseph who saw God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, in a grove of trees was transformed into a spiritual giant.
Carrying a grudge is a heavy burden. As you forgive, you will feel the joy of being forgiven.
For one who feels compelled, as I do, to accept the existence of the Master Architect, it is important to examine his handiwork for the light it throws on him and on his program for his children. For me, there has been no serious difficulty in reconciling the principles of true science with the principles of true religion.
It is a lie that our anger justifies our impulse to hurt or ignore our antagonists. We are to forgive to be forgiven. To wait for them to repent before we forgive and repent is to allow them to choose for us a delay which could cost us happiness here and hereafter.
The enemy of human happiness as well as the cause of poverty and starvation is not the birth of children. It is the failure of people to do with the earth what God could teach them to do if only they would ask and then obey, for they are agents unto themselves.
The pavilion that seems to intercept divine aid does not cover God but occasionally covers us. God is never hidden, yet sometimes we are, covered by a pavilion of motivations that draw us away from God and make Him seem distant and inaccessible.
Some people conclude that the injustices existing in the world prove there is no God. On the contrary, I conclude that God, being both just and merciful, will and can rectify all inequities in a life after death.
We were promised that we would have Jehovah, Jesus Christ, as our Savior and Redeemer. He would assure that we would all be resurrected. And He would make it possible for us to pass the test of life if we exercised faith in Him by being obedient.
