Ultimate hope constitutes the anchor of the soul.

All crosses are easier to carry when we keep moving.

Listen to these wounds of pain put in the form of questions to me by a young woman who had had two abortions: "I wonder about the spirits of those I had aborted, if they were there, if they were hurt? I was under three months each time, but a mother feels life before she feels movement." "I wonder if they are lost and alone?" "I wonder if they will ever have a body?" "I wonder if I will ever have a chance again to bring those spirits back as mine?" Alas, brothers and sisters, "wickedness never was happiness" (Alma 41:10).

Naive optimism and pervasive pessimism are both to be avoided, therefore. It's not an easy balance to maintain, to be asked to work away in the Ninevehs of our lives without being so conscious of the coming cataclysm that we are not serious citizens of our communities and nations. By living and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we are doing the most relevant thing we can do by way of helping. (There are civic and other chores to be done, of course.) Day in and day out, the gospel is the one thing that is most relevant, and we are to be of good cheer.

When great individuals move so marvelously along the straight and narrow path, it is unseemly of us to call attention to the fact that one of their shoelaces is untied as they make the journey.

We can tell much by what we have already willing discarded along the pathway of discipleship. It is the only pathway where littering is permissible, even encouraged. In the early stages, the debris left behind includes the grosser sins of commission. Later debris differs; things begin to be discarded which have caused the misuse or underuse of our time and talent.

A new calling can beckon us away from comfortable routine and from competencies already acquired.