A Long Look at Life – Sunday, December 8, 1940
Our generation has lived to see the time when most of the children of earth live their lives from day to day with heavy hearts, with threatening danger, with the fear of uncertainty haunting their sleeping and waking hours, in the midst of physical want, mental anguish, and deep sorrow.
Of the two billion, two hundred million children of our Father in Heaven who walk the ways of life in this our day, some three-fourths are, or have been in the recent past, actually or technically at war, and of those comparatively few who have thus far escaped, many millions are daily witnesses of its ugly, threatening shape, some closer, some more distant. And then, add unto this public tragedy the personal grief and worries and disappointments of all the men of all the Earth, and the burden of sorrow appears to be such as would crush the spirit of mankind.
But this it falls to do, because there is yet abroad upon the earth sufficient faith in the ultimate triumph of good, sufficient confidence in the eventual accomplishment of justice, sufficient belief in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, and sufficient assurance that these fleeting days are only a drop in the sea of eternity. Thinking of life in terms of any given moment or any given day of any given year might give it a somber, disappointing character. But thinking of it in terms of a march toward achievement without limit, into worlds without end, in pursuit of knowledge too vast to be exhausted, with hope too real to be daunted, and purposes too profound to be understood here and now – in the light of such things to be realized, the difficulties of the moment become secondary, and the certainties of the future overshadow the uncertainties of the present.
To those who are discouraged with their own lives, or with the outlook in general, we cite the example of a prophet of God who was young and who loved life and who thought his lot was hard and who complained of those experiences which he had been called upon to pass through, and unto him, the Father of us all, gave this word: “My son, peace be unto your soul. Thine adversity and thine affliction shall be but a small moment; and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all.” (Doctrine and Covenants 121: 7 and 8) Of such is our message to all who are weary and sick of heart.
December 8, 1940
Broadcast Number 0,590