“Beneath the visible, beyond the tangible, underlying the measurable, is the real force that makes [a people] great. It is the force of freedom. Freedom has a unique power all its own. It begins with material things—freedom from hunger, from cold, and from want. Remember when you felt that a five-dollar gift from Dad would solve the problems of the day? That feeling doesn’t seem to change, although the amount needed to satisfy the gap seems to increase as one grows older. Is freedom a feast only to be enjoyed by the wealthy? No! While there may be a relationship between money and freedom, money is not freedom’s ticket. In fact money can enslave it’s owner with greed.
Freedom is more than material. It is more than political. It is a mental, spiritual force. Freedom reaches full fruition when it achieves spiritual fulfillment. Once I read of a prisoner of war, deprived of all material, political, and physical freedoms, who gained power to survive the ordeal as he forged from his memory verses from the Bible, which he wrote on scraps of bathroom tissue with stubs of lead pencil. While yet in physical bondage, he conceived his own spiritual liberty. He terminated restless torment by self-surrender to a greater power. ~ Russell M. Nelson (“Freedom and Hope,” address delivered in Midway, Utah, July 4, 1986; quoted from ‘Teachings of Russell M. Nelson, p. 128, Deseret Book 2018)
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience, and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
