"[I]f now or on
some future day, you look around and see that other perhaps less-devoted
acquaintances are succeeding in their jobs when you just lost yours; if major
illness puts you on your back just at the moment critical tasks of service seem
to come calling; if a call to a prominent position goes to someone else…if
well-meaning efforts still somehow lead to disaster with a fellow ward member,
a neighbor, or an investigator; if news from home brings word of financial
setback or mortal tragedy you can do nothing about; or if, day after day, you
simply feel like a bland and beaten background player in a gospel drama that
really seems made for the happiness of others, just know this: many such
things were the lot of Joseph Smith himself at the very moment he was being led
to the stage of the single most transcendent thing to happen on this earth
since the events of Golgotha and the Garden Tomb nearly 2,000 years earlier.
"'But,' you may
say, 'my life and earthly destiny will never be like that of the Prophet
Joseph.'
"That probably is
true. But it is also true that your lives do matter to God, and your eternal
potential and that of every soul you will meet is no less grand and significant
than that of the Prophet Joseph himself. Thus, just like our beloved Joseph,
you must never give up, give in, or give out when life in general…gets utterly
painful, confusing, or dull. Rather, as Paul teaches, you must see that 'all
things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called
according to his purpose'.
“Just as He did with
young Joseph Smith, God is shaping and directing you every single day to ends
more glorious than you can know!"
