Our God is a God of love. He waits with open arms, and the unfolding of His merciful plan of salvation is not only therefore the mark of divine power but also the mark of God's relentless, redeeming love. It is a point well worth pondering because, among other reasons, it will help us to understand better why God, through the prophets, denounces sin and corruption in such scalding terms. He loves all of us, His spirit sons and daughters, but hates our vices. His denunciation of those vices may, if we are not careful, seem to obscure the enormous and perfect love He has for us.

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."

Blessed is he who will not be offended

Patience is tied very closely to faith in our Heavenly Father. Actually, when we are unduly impatient, we are suggesting that we know what is best—better than does God. Or, at least, we are asserting that our timetable is better than His. We can grow in faith only if we are willing to wait patiently for God's purposes and patterns to unfold in our lives, on His timetable.

In Gospel grammar, death is not an exclamation point, merely a comma.

The "new" in us is bound to notice the "old" that remains.

Endurance involves much more than putting up with a situation; Patient Endurance is more than pacing up and down within the cell of circumstance. True Enduring represents not merely the passage of time, . . . but the Passage of Soul.