We can become highly specialized in our professions, vocations, and avocations wherein we can do much good. We can even have “joy…for a season” and yet still lack “one thing’: full submissiveness to God (Mark 10:21). Furthermore, receiving even the deserved plaudits of mankind can bring addicting adulation—an endangering substitute for what God desires to give us. For instance, an individual of integrity might not bear false witness, and yet never fully yield his mind to God! Another might bestow generous help on the poor, but live as an adulterer.
In the ultimate and seamless symmetry of the soul there is no place for this patchwork of jarring jaggedness. True joy is everlasting, not just “for a season.” ~ Neal A. Maxwell
