In LDS Conference yesterday, President Eyring addressed what I know to be true, however difficult — that great adversity brings great blessings, worth the cost of the pain. But I hate the pain and difficulty. I should look at these challenges differently. No one escapes physical, mental, and emotional trials in life. Eyring spoke of a man that called out from his sick bed, “When I have tried all my life to be good, why has this happened to me?”
Eyring went on to quote the famous lines from the Lord to Joseph Smith, when he suffered in Liberty jail in 1839 for 4 months,
And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. (D&C 122:7)
When my son was serving a mission in Moldova one of the people there asked him how to say a common Russian phrase in English. In saying goodbye, the phrase used in Russian did not have an equivalent one in English. My son gave him the closest saying, “Happy trails“. The young man was content and waved the missionaries on their way, shouting back to them, “Happy trials!”
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| Liberty Jail, Illinois, 1888 |
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| Joseph Smith and five other Mormons imprisoned in Liberty Jail |
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| Upstairs — the prisoners were lowered through the hole in the foor. |
