Unproductive worry - like Parkinson's proverbial law - tends to expand to fill the time available.

Therefore, as we strive to become as the Father is and as Jesus is, we are to become more gracious and merciful, more kind and considerate. Even more, we are to do this in a world which does little to encourage such qualities of character.

The Lord has said, ‘I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.’ (Isaiah 48:10, 1 Nephi 20:10). He knows, being omniscient, how we will cope with affliction beforehand. But we do not know this. We need, therefore, the refining that God gives to us, though we do not seek or crave such tribulation.

In contrast to the path of selfishness, there is no room for road rage on the straight and narrow way.

Truly we work and live on a streetful of splendid people, whom we are to love and serve even if they are uninterested in us!

There are certain mortal moments and minutes that matter. Certain hingepoints in the history of each human. Some seconds are so decisive they shrink the soul, while others are spent, so as to stretch the soul.

The submissive will make it through to that final scene, for the word of God will lead the man and woman of Christ "in a straight and narrow course across that everlasting gulf of misery . . . and land their souls . . . at the right hand of God in the kingdom, to sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and with Jacob, and with all our holy fathers" (Helaman 3:30) "who have been ever since the world began . . . to go no more out."