From Elder Neal A. Maxwell, his book ‘Not My Will, but Thine’:
. . . despite our innate longings for the ideally good and beautiful, it is so easy to be caught up instead in the cares and things of the world. This is done to our cost, however, for passivity toward things spiritual will move us toward that low-grade “joy in [our] works for a season” (3 Nephi 27:11). The combination of life and the light of Christ is designed to help us discern between the real thing and all the clever counterfeits and sparkling substitutes.
Moreover, there is no way to go around life. The only way to go is through. How, for instance, could the Lord teach us patience without the dimension of time and without also providing for us the relevant clinical experiences? How could we learn to place the cares and praise of the world in proper perspective without having encountered them? How else could we learn the differences between the holy and the profane? In what other way could we witness first-hand as between genuine gospel solutions and secular solutions? Some of the latter, though sincere, contain enormous errors, producing chickens which, when they come home to roost, will be full-grown pterodactyls!
Even with all the encompassing divine design, we can “make a mock of the great plan of redemption” (Jacob 6:8) by failing individually in this mortal school. Understandably, therefore, the prophets often speak in exhortational headlines, but also in loving summation: “O be wise; what can I say more?” (Jacob 6:12).
Submissiveness hastens the day when we shall see resplendent reality, things as they really were, really are, and really will become (Jacob 4:13; Doctrine and covenants 93:24)
The challenge, of course, is not only to become spiritually submissive to God but also to stay that way: “For behold, the Spirit of the Lord hath already ceased to strive with their fathers; and they are without Christ and God in the world; and they are driven about as chaff before the wind. They were once a delightsome people, and they had Christ for their shepherd; yea, they were led even by God the Father. But now behold they are led about by Satan, even as chaff is driven before the wind. . . (Mormon 5:16-18) ~Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (deceased), from his book ‘Not My Will, but Thine’ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1988) 11-13
continued. . . . ‘As Obedient Children II’
