L. Todd Budge of the Seventy said in a October 2019 conference:
“Our son Dan got very sick on his mission in Africa and was taken to a medical facility with limited resources. As we read his first letter to us after his illness, we expected that he would be discouraged, but instead he wrote, “Even as I lay in the emergency room, I felt peace. I have never been so consistently and resiliently happy in my life.”
As my wife and I read these words, we were overcome with emotion. Consistently and resiliently happy. We had never heard happiness described that way, but his words rang true. We knew that the happiness he described was not simply pleasure or an elevated mood but a peace and joy that come when we surrender ourselves to God and put our trust in Him in all things.1 We too had had those times in our lives when God spoke peace to our souls and caused us to have hope in Christ even when life was hard and uncertain.2
In a paradoxical way, afflictions and sorrow prepare us to experience joy if we will trust in the Lord and His plan for us. This truth is beautifully expressed by a 13th-century poet: “Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”4, see below
President Russell M. Nelson taught, “The joy the Savior offers [us] … is constant, assuring us that our ‘afflictions shall be but a small moment’ [*] and be consecrated to our gain.”5 Our trials and afflictions can make space for greater joy.6
The good news of the gospel is not the promise of a life free of sorrow and tribulation but a life full of purpose and meaning—a life where our sorrows and afflictions can be “swallowed up in the joy of Christ.”7 The Savior declared, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”8 His gospel is a message of hope. Sorrow coupled with hope in Jesus Christ holds the promise of enduring joy.
For Elder Budge’s complete talk, click. . . ‘Consistent and Resilient Faith’
Notes:
4. See The Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi (1925–40), trans. Reynold A. Nicholson, vol. 5, 132.
7. See also Neal A. Maxwell’s address: ‘Brim With Joy’ (Brigham Young University devotional, January 23, 1996)
