For Times of Trouble ~ Part One

Good Morning or Good Afternoon or Good Evening, 

this post should take four minutes to six minutes to read from start to finish. 

This post focuses on Brigham Young University {BYU} Devotional, and it is called "For Times of Trouble" by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. This post is part one, and I would like to share with you some highlights that I have liked about from the Devotional.

Elder Holland has mentioned the following; 

"... I know of nothing Satan uses quite so cunningly or cleverly in his work on a young man or woman in your present circumstances. I speak of doubt especially self-doubt of discouragement, and of despair. In doing so I don’t wish to suggest that there aren’t plenty of things in the world to be troubled by. 

In our lives, individually and collectively, there surely are serious threats to our happiness. ... With all of this waiting for us we are tempted, as W. C. Fields once said, to “smile first thing in the morning and get it over with.” 

... I’m anxious this morning about your problems with school and love and finances and the future, about your troubles concerning a place in life and the value of your contribution, about your private fears regarding where you are going and whether you think you will ever get there. 

... This morning I want to attack double-digit depression. In doing so, however, I wish at the outset to make a distinction F. Scott Fitzgerald once made, that “trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement - discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint” (The Crack-Up, 1945). 

Troubles we all have, but the “germ” of discouragement, to use Fitzgerald’s word, is not in the trouble, it is in us. Or to be more precise, I believe it is in Satan, the Prince of Darkness, the Father of Lies. And he would have it be in us. 

It’s frequently a small germ, hardly worth going to the Health Center for, but it will work and it will grow and it will spread. In fact it can become almost a habit, a way of living and thinking, and there the greatest damage is done.

Then it takes an increasingly severe toll on our spirit, for it erodes the deepest religious commitments we can make - those of faith, and hope, and charity. We turn inward and look downward, and these greatest of Christlike virtues are damaged or at very least impaired. We become unhappy and soon make others unhappy, and before long Lucifer laughs. 

... You can consider it part of a very valuable education to labor over it in your own life. Plan. Prepare. Budget. Work. Save. Sacrifice. Spend cheerfully on things that matter. Smile at an old pair of shoes. Pay your tithing. Cherish a used book. 

Though some of you may be living in almost desperate financial straits, I promise you there is a way. Such times may be burdensome. Such sacrifice may be hard. But it does not have to lead - for you it must not lead - to despair and destruction and defeat. 

In the words of Henry David Thoreau: Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only dispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. [Walden (1854), 1, “Economy”]

"Happiness comes when we stop complaining about
the troubles we have and offer thanks for all the
troubles we don't have." 

Love your life, poor as it is. . . . The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man’s abode. [Walden (1854), 18, “Conclusion”] 

... Quite apart from the financial challenge, schoolwork itself can be quite a drag. ... Perhaps that discouraged me more than anything. You see, I discouraged me. I discouraged myself. 

... And that’s the worst kind of despair, the kind of self-despising that eats at our image and crushes our hopes. ... The point is the same with school as with money or marriage or profession or any hope and dream. 

Prepare. Plan. Work. Sacrifice. Rework. Spend cheerfully on matters of worth. Carry the calm, and wear the assurance of having done the best you could with what you had. 

If you work hard and prepare earnestly, it will be very difficult for you to give in or give up or wear down. If you labor with faith in God and in yourself and in your future, you will have built upon a rock. Then, when the winds blow and the rains come as surely they will you shall not fall. 

Of course, some things are not under your control. Some disappointments come regardless of your effort and preparation, for God wishes us to be strong as well as good. ... Drive even these experiences into the corner, painful though they may be, and learn from them. In this, too, you have friends through the ages in whom you can take comfort and with whom you can form timeless bonds. 

... Remember, “Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement - discouragement has a germ of its own.” If you are trying hard and living right and things still seem burdensome and difficult, take heart. Others have walked that way before you. Do you feel unpopular and different, or outside the inside of things? 

... Are you afraid people don’t like you? ...Do you ever feel untalented or incapable or inferior? ... There is, of course, one source of despair more serious than all the rest. It is linked with poor preparation of a far more serious order. 

It is the opposite of sanctification. It is the most destructive discouragement in time or eternity. It is transgression against God. It is depression embedded in sin." 

Stay Tuned until next time.