Photo Thought: Faith in the Face of Trial

"[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!"

(Matthew Holland, "The Path to Palmyra", Ensign, June 2015)