“More patience in suff’ring” (“More Holiness Give Me, Phillip Paul Bliss). When we have fasted, prayed, pled, bargained, begged, and demanded for the bitter cup to be removed from our lips or the thorn in our flesh to be removed from our side and despite our every effort our Heavenly Father in His infinite wisdom gently but firmly insists that our time in the furnace of affliction has not yet concluded, what else can we do? We can cling to our pride and kick against the pricks and use every means to subvert or override God's will, but most of us have learned through painful experience that all that this can accomplish is to add a whole new host of suffering to our plate without getting rid of any of the original reasons we were suffering in the first place. When there is nothing that we can do to cut short our trials and tribulations and God won't cut them short either, then the one thing we can do is plead with the Lord to give us more patience in our suffering. If endure we must, then it is far better for us in the long run for us to endure it well and to let even our most bitter trials work together for our good and God's glory than for us to complain and fight and give up and complain and fight again and accomplish nothing except to multiply our sorrows and sufferings. In the Book of Morning, two groups - the people of Limhi and the people of Alma - both end up in captivity and bondage around the same time. The people of Limhi were impatient and fought again and again against their captivity and against the will and the timing of the Lord and after all of their struggle, the only thing they had to show for it was a growing number of widows and orphans. The people of Alma, on the other hand, in addition to praying for their swift release from bondage, prayed for more patience and humility in their suffering. “And it came to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage. And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions. And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.” (Mosiah 24:13-15). When everything is going right and life is easy, we have no need for the Lord to visit us, but if we are patient in our suffering, then the Lord will visit us in our afflictions. A little pain and sorrow seems a small price to pay to have the Lord visit us and strengthen us so that we can bear our burdens with ease. I hope that all of our suffering ends swiftly, but if it does not, then I hope we will all have the faith and humility to accept that our suffering cannot end just yet and to instead to pray for more patience in suffering and then our eventual release will be all the sweeter for us having endured well the burdens placed upon us.
