Mormon Musings

So often in life, it seems, a blessing is quickly succeeded by a stretching.  Spiritual exhilaration is often short lived, being soon followed by vexation, temptation, and even tribulation.  Perhaps this is so because we cannot handle exhilaration for any length of time.  Or it is because we need to get on with the next challenge, there being so little time for languishing?  Or it is that experiencing the sharp, side-by-side contrast of the sweet and the bitter, almost continuously, is essential until the very end of this mortal existence?  Or are we at risk if in extended spiritual reveries we quickly forget others in need?  Whatever the reasons, the Lord hastens us forward--submissively on to the next work to be done.  Handcarts are to be picked up again promptly, after pausing whether for gladness or for sadness. Elder Neal A. Maxwell, " Not My Will But Thine " p. 13

Trials and tribulations tend to squeeze the artificiality out of us, leaving the essence of what we really are and clarifying what we really yearn for. Therefore, the record will be clear. -Elder Neal A. Maxwell

"You that have not passed through the trials, and persecutions, and drivings of this people, from the beginning, but have only read of them, or heard some of then related, may think how awful they were to endure, and wonder that the Saints survived them at all.  The thought of it makes your hearts sink within you, your brains reel, and your bodies tremble, and you are ready to exclaim, 'I could not have endured it.'   I have been in the heat of it, and I never felt better in my life; I never felt the peace and power of the Almighty more copiously poured upon me than in the keenest part of our trials.  They appeared as nothing to me .  I hear people talk about their troubles, their sole privations, and the great sacrifices they have made for the Gospel's sake.  It never was a sacrifice to me.  Anything I can do or suffer in the cause of the Gospel, is only like dropping a pin into the sea; the blessings, gifts, powers, honor, joy, truth, salvation, glory, immortality, a