Most metals are fairly hard when cool, but place even the hardest metal into a hot enough fire and it will become soft as butter. For most of us who have to face the cold, hard reality of the world in which we live, it is little wonder that our love for mankind may wax cold and our hearts become hardened. With all of the violence and unrest and tragedies and disasters, both natural and man-made, allowing ourselves to become numb and desensitized is practically a matter of survival. But having a hard heart is antithetical to our mission to become more like our Savior Jesus Christ. Even at His lowest moment, when He bore the infinite weight of the sins of the world, a pain so exquisite that it made Him, the greatest of all, to tremble, Christ nevertheless did not shut Himself off from feeling any of it. Like the Savior, we can choose to stay in the furnace of affliction, even when the heat seems unbearable. As Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego discovered, Christ will be with us in the fiery furnace. What is more, while we remain in the furnace, the heat is so intense that it is all but impossible for our hearts to harden. It is only when we turn our backs on our Savior and flee from the furnace and find ourselves back in the cold, dead world of self-centered nihilists obsessed with their own private miseries that our hearts will begin to harden. If we can just manage to keep the Holy Ghost as our constant companion, then our hearts never need to become hardened. After all, the Spirit of God like a fire is burning, and if we have that flame dwelling inside our hearts, then the heat of those flames will keep our hearts soft. “But behold, there are many that harden their hearts against the Holy Spirit, that it hath no place in them; wherefore, they cast many things away which are written and esteem them as things of naught.” (2 Nephi 33:2). Whether we are clinging to the Savior in the furnace of Affliction or carrying our own miniature sun of the blazing light and glory of God's love that is the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, the closer we are to any member of the Godhead, the softer our hearts will be, and the more submissive and meek and humble we will be. The farther we get from our Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, the harder it will be for us. Let us never leave the softening warmth of God's love, so that our hearts are never too hard to allow a place for the Spirit to be with us.
