You rock a sobbing child without wondering if today's world is passing you by, because you know you hold tomorrow tightly in your arms.

Sometimes we are so busy being the hammer or the anvil, that we forget who really needs the shaping.

The great challenge is to refuse to let the bad things that happen to us do bad things to us. That is the crucial difference between adversity and tragedy.

Why is it that for many persons changing others is so exciting and so relevant, while changing oneself is so boring and irrelevant?

If we are serious about our discipleship, Jesus will eventually request each of us to do those very things which are most difficult for us to do.

To think of enduring to the end as ‘hanging in there,’ doing one’s duty relentlessly, is not inaccurate. Yet enduring to the end is more than outlasting and surviving, though it includes those qualities. We are called upon, as was the Prophet Joseph, to ‘endure it well,’ gracefully, not grudgingly. (D&C 121:8.) We are also told that we must ‘endure in faith.’ (D&C 101:35.) These dimensions of enduring are important to note. Likewise, we are asked to endure ‘valiantly.’ (D&C 121:29.)

Consecration thus constitutes the only unconditional surrender which is also a total victory!