Editor’s note: This column is part of a series of personal opinion essays called The Light of Hope. We asked community and faith leaders to answer the question, when life feels dark, what gives you hope? We will publish their responses throughout December. Get weekly roundups of the project in your email in-box by signing up for the Living Our Faith newsletter.
Knowing that I am a son of heavenly parents and that my life is part of a plan where I chose to come to Earth to be tested helps to keep the inevitable trials and tribulations in perspective when life feels dark. Knowing that God’s plan for each of his children is to come back to his presence and to become like he is, while not always a shield from doubt or the other ills that beset each of us, nonetheless helps to assuage the sorrow and provide hope and solace.
I take comfort in the belief that God’s plan includes a savior, Jesus Christ, of whom one prophet noted in the Book of Mormon: “And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people. And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.”
As modern-day apostle David Bednar has stated in his book Power to Become: “If all opposition were curtailed, if all maladies were removed, then the primary purposes of the Father’s plan would be frustrated. … Many of the lessons we are to learn in mortality can be received only through the things we experience and sometimes suffer. And God expects and trusts us to face temporary mortal adversity with His help so we can learn what we need to learn and ultimately become what we are to become in eternity.”
And as Spencer Kimball quotes Orson F. Whitney in his biography of the apostle: “No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God … and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire.”
This is what gives me hope.
Mark W. Romney is the president of the Dallas Texas Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He and his wife Belinda are the parents of six children and the grandparents of twenty grandchildren. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.