The other day I was walking through Boston’s Public Garden and I saw a statue of the Abolitionist Wendell Phillips with the inscription, “Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.” We are given the power to choose liberty or captivity. This power is available to us every single moment of our lives. It doesn’t matter how deep the dungeon, how strong the bars, how unbreakable the chains, we still have the power to choose liberty. And every time we choose liberty, it is a victory. It seems almost a contradiction in terms to enjoy the spirit of liberty while still bound with chains, but for all of us who have made the effort to humble ourselves enough to cry out to our Savior for deliverance and by so doing to choose liberty, then, having made the choice, we can’t deny that there is a real and powerful difference in our outlook and in our attitude and in our very souls even if there is no immediate breaking of our chains. As the people of Limhi discovered, the victories of liberty can be slow and painful and hard-won. “And they did humble themselves even in the depths of humility; and they did cry mightily to God; yes, even all the day long did they cry unto their God that he would deliver them out of their afflictions. And now the Lord was slow to hear their cry because of their iniquities; nevertheless the Lord did hear their cries, and began to soften the hearts of the lamanites that they began to ease their burdens; yet the Lord did not see fit to deliver them out of bondage. And it came to pass that they began to prosper by degrees in the land” (Mosiah 21:14-16). We can prosper by degrees and gain small victories as we tear apart our chains link by link. Many of us have a hard time acknowledging that anything less than effortlessly soaring through the air on the wings of eagles can even be considered a victory. But is it any more of a victory to stand on the podium and have a gold medal placed on our chest for having swum the fastest in a well-lit pool free of obstacles wearing aerodynamically engineered shark-skin swimsuits than it is to swim a mile to shore weighed down by sodden clothes against a heavy riptide after our boat foundered upon the rocks and finally kiss the sand upon the shore after we were certain that we were going to drown? To paraphrase the Savior a little, there is more joy in heaven over one soul who has finally shaken off the shackles of captivity, than for ninety and nine crowned in laurels who never lost their liberty. If we were once crowned with laurels and traded them for chains, we have the power to trade our chains back for laurels. And if we are currently crowned with laurels and free of chains, we do not need to feel guilty or ashamed of our current prosperity, but rather, we can take advantage of our heightened level of liberty to go around and help break the chains of our brothers and sisters who have not given up the fight and are even now finding nothing but victories. I know that through Jesus Christ we have access to the power to break every chain and to transform them into a “far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4:17). I hope that whatever are circumstance, we will always choose liberty and that we will know nothing but victories.
