Neal A. Maxwell wrote: “. . . we can only break outside our present conceptual and experiential constraints on the basis of deeper understanding that is gained by the Spirit. If we think only in usual ways, we will not understand the unusual experiences through which we must sometimes pass. But if we can trust God and know that He is there and that He loves us, then we can cope well and endure well.
Interviewed on television recently was a young wrestler who is blind and who wants to try out for the 1980 U.S. Olympic team. This marvelous young man apparently asks of his opponents only that they touch him (fingertip to fingertip) as the match begins, which, frankly, is all that of some of them remember, because he is so fast and pins them so quickly! But as the young wrestler’s strong but sweet attitude came through in the interview that followed, the scripture came to mind in which a disciple of the Savior said, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” “Neither,” said the Savior, reassuringly, “but that the works of God should be manifest in him.” (John 9:2-3)
There are some things allotted to us in life that have been divinely fashioned according to our ability and our capacity. When we see individuals coping with what seems to be a tragedy and making of it an opportunity, then we begin to partake of the deep wisdom in the Savior’s response considering the blind man.
The Lord said, “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.” (Isiah 48:10; 1 Nephi 20:10.) He knows, being omniscient, how we will cope with affliction beforehand. But we do not know this. We need, therefore, the refining that God gives to us, though we do not seek or crave such tribulation.
Is not our struggling amid suffering and chastening in a way like the efforts of the baby chicken still in the egg? It must painfully and patiently make its own way out of the shell. To help the chick by breaking the egg for it could be to kill it. Unless it struggles itself to break outside its initial constraints, it may not have the strength to survive thereafter.
Afflictions can soften us and sweeten us, and can be a chastening influence. (Alma 62:41) We often think of chastening as something done to punish us, such as by a mortal tutor who is angry and peevish with us. Divine chastening, however, is a form of learning as it is administered at the hands of a loving Father. (Helaman 12:3.)
Elder James E. Faust of the Council of the Twelve has said, “In the pain, the agony, and the heroic endeavors of life, we pass through the refiner’s fire, and the insignificant and the unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong.” (Ensign, May 1979 p.53.) Elder Faust continued, “This change comes about through a refining process which often seems cruel and hard. In this way the soul can become like soft clay in the hands of the Master.”
It was President Hugh B. Brown who observed, “If we banish hardship we banish hardihood.” And, further, “One mans disillusion may be another’s inspiration. The same exposure to pain, misery and sorrow that coarsens the mind and callouses the soul of one may give to another a power of compassionate understanding and humility without which mere achievement remains primitive.” (New Era, December 1974, pp.4-7.) ~Neal A. Maxwell, And All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1979), 38-39
