On occasions, global or personal, we may feel we are distanced from God, shut out from heaven, lost, alone in dark and dreary places. Often enough that distress can be of our own making, but even then the Father of us all is watching and assisting. And always there are those angels who come and go all around us, seen and unseen, known and unknown, mortal and immortal.

The world around us is an increasingly hostile and sinful place. Occasionally that splashes onto us, and perhaps, in the case of a few of you, it may be nearly drowning you. To anyone struggling under the burden of sin, I say again with the Prophet Joseph that God has ‘a forgiving disposition’ (Lectures on Faith, 42). You can change. You can be helped. You can be made whole—whatever the problem.

Satan is certainly not subtle in his teachings; why should we be? Whether we are instructing our children at home or standing before an audience in church, let us never make our faith difficult to detect.

The Church is not a monastery for the isolation of perfect people. It is more like a hospital provided for those who wish to get well.

We must not pull away from our children. We must keep trying, keep reaching, keep praying, keep listening. We must keep them within the clasp of our arms.

In His own ministry, Jesus did not come to improve God's view of man nearly so much as He came to improve man's view of God and to plead with them to love their Heavenly Father as He has always and will always love them.

To you who think you are lost or without hope, or who think you have done too much that was too wrong for too long, to every one of you who worry that you are stranded somewhere on the wintry plains of life and have wrecked your handcart in the process, we call out "Jehovah's unrelenting refrain, "My hand is stretched out still" (Isaiah 5:25: 9:17,21). "...His mercy endureth forever, and His hand is stretched out still. His is the pure love of Christ, the charity that never faileth, that compassion which endures even when all other strength disappears".