I wish to assume a special prerogative this
morning and speak to the women in the audience, my “sisters” if you will. Not only are
the women on this campus of very special interest to me, but if I know men—and I think I do—they
will now be listening with even more than normal interest. So let me greet you at the
start of this new year and new semester with a bit of straight “girl talk.” For several years now I have had what has
been both an exhilarating and sobering opportunity to observe rather closely the sisters of my
own sex. That has included seven wonderful and event-filled years on this campus with
you—including two of those years when I also served in the General Young Women Presidency
of the Church. During this time I have, like other Church leaders and mothers and sisters,
worried over the statistics on teenage pregnancies, drug abuse, and the spread of disorders like
anorexia and bulimia. At the same time I have been reading those statistics, I have also
seen data showing that six million women in this country, with children under six years
of age, have hung up their aprons, picked up their briefcases, and marched into the
career world. I also read of a new and very real illness
called the Epstein-Barr syndrome, which has come into our popular medical jargon as the
malady of the eighties. Its symptoms are low-grade fevers, aching joints, and other flulike symptoms—but
it isn’t the flu. It carries with it overwhelming exhaustion, muscular weakness, and physical
debilitation—but it isn’t the dreaded AIDS. Its victims are often confused and forgetful
but, no, it isn’t Alzheimer’s. Many feel suicidal, but this disease lacks the traditional
characteristics of clinical depression. And yes, it can strike men, but three times out
of four it doesn’t. This illness is primarily a women’s disease, and those most vulnerable
are the so-called “fast-track” women in high-stress, conflicting roles. Is it appropriate to pause now, right here
in safe and sane Happy Valley, USA, and ask woman-to-woman, “What are we doing to ourselves?”
Is this that female curse Isaiah spoke of in his prophecies? Is this some special last
days’ dilemma into which we are entering and from which we may find it near-fatally
difficult to withdraw? I believe that as women we are becoming so
concerned about having perfect figures, or straight A’s, or professional status, or
even absolute motherly success, that we are being torn from our true selves. We often
worry so much about pleasing and performing for others that we lose our own uniqueness,
that full and relaxed acceptance of ourselves as a person of worth and individuality. Too
many women watch helplessly as their lives unravel from the core that centers and sustains
them. Too many are like a ship at sea without sail or rudder, tossed to and fro (as the
Apostle Paul said) until more and more of us are genuinely, rail-grabbingly seasick. Where is the sureness that allows us to sail
our ship—whatever winds may blow—with the master seaman’s triumphant cry, “Steady
as she goes”? Where is the inner stillness we so cherish and for which our sex traditionally
has been known? In the shadow of the twenty-first century can we find what Charles Morgan once
described as “the stilling of the soul within the activities of the mind and body [as] still
as [the center] of a revolving wheel is still?" I believe we can find it—the steady footing
and the stilling of the soul—by turning away from the fragmentation of physical preoccupations
(whether it be thin or fat) of superwoman careers or endless popularity contests and
returning instead to the wholeness of our soul. One woman not of our faith but whose writings
I love is Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In commenting on the female despair and general torment
of our times she writes: The Feminists did not look . . . far [enough]
ahead; they laid down no rules of conduct. For them it was enough to demand the privileges.
. . . And [so] woman today is still searching. We are aware of our hunger and needs, but
still ignorant of what will satisfy them. With our garnered free time, we are more apt
to drain our creative springs than to refill them. With our pitchers [in hand], we attempt
. . . to water a field, [instead of] a garden. We throw ourselves indiscriminately into committees
and causes. Not knowing how to feed the spirit, we try to muffle its demands in distractions.
Instead of stilling the center, the axis of the wheel, we add more centrifugal activities
to our lives—which tend to throw us [yet more] off balance. Mechanically we have gained, in the last generation,
but spiritually we have . . . lost. [For women] the problem is [still] how to
feed the soul. I have pondered long and hard about the feeding
of our inner self. It is no coincidence that we speak of “feeding the spirit” just
as we would speak of feeding the body. We need constant nourishment for both. The root
word hale (as in hale and hearty) is the common root to words like whole, health, heal, and
holy. Our health and our wholeness are unquestionably linked with our holiness. We need very much
for body, mind, and spirit to come together, to unite in one healthy, stable soul. May I give you my own analogy of something
I read years ago, a process that helped me then, and helps me still, in my examination
of inner strength and spiritual growth. The analogy is of a soul—a human soul, with
all of its splendor—being placed in a beautifully carved but very tightly locked box. This box
is then placed and locked inside another, larger one, and so on until five beautifully
carved but very securely locked boxes await the woman who is skillful and wise enough
to open them. Success will reveal to her the beauty and divinity of her own soul, her gifts
and her grace as a daughter of God. Prayer is the key to the first box. We kneel
to ask help for the tasks and then arise to find that quite miraculously the first lock
is now already open. Our excitement upon gaining entrance to a new dimension of our divinity
leads us readily to the next box. But here our prayers alone do not seem to be sufficient.
We turn to the scriptures for God’s teachings about our soul. And we find that the second
box now yields its own mysteries and rewards to the probing key of revelation. But with the beginning of such success in
emancipating the soul, Lucifer becomes more anxious, especially as we approach box number
three. He knows that to truly find ourselves we must lose ourselves, so he begins to block
our increased efforts to love—to love God, our neighbor, and ourselves. True charity
takes us into the beauty of box number three. Real growth and genuine insight are coming
now, but the lid to box number four seems nearly impossible to penetrate, for we are
climbing, too, in this story, and the way inward is also the way upward. Unfortunately,
the faint-hearted and fearful often turn back here—the going seems too difficult, the
lock too secure. This is a time for self-evaluation. To see ourselves as we really are often brings
pain; but true humility, which comes from that process, is a godly virtue. We must be
patient with ourselves as we overcome weaknesses and remember to rejoice over all that is good
in us. This will strengthen theinner woman and leave her less dependent on outward acclaim.
When the soul reaches the stage that it pays less attention to praise, it then cares very
little when the public disapproves. These feelings of strength and the quiet triumph
of faith carry us into an even brighter sphere. This fourth box, unlike the others, bursts
open like a flower blooms, and the earth is reborn. The opening of the fifth and final box can
only be portrayed symbolically, and perhaps the temple is the best symbol of all. There,
in a setting not of this world, where fashions and position and professions go unrecognized,
we have our chance to meet God face-to-face. For those who, like the brother of Jared,
have the courage and faith to break through the veil into that sacred center of existence,
we will find the brightness of the final box brighter than the noonday sun. There we will
find peace and serenity and a stillness that will anchor our soul forever, for there we
will find God. Wholeness. Holiness. That is what it says
over the entrance to the fifth box. Holiness to the Lord. “Know ye not that ye are the
temple of God?” I testify that you are holy, that just by being born, divinity is abiding
within you, waiting to be uncovered—to be reborn. God bless you in your search for the
sacred center of your soul, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. In the final few weeks of 1944 I was bundled
up and taken, at about six in the morning as I recall, down to the Big Hand Cafe on
the corner of Main Street and Highway 91 in St. George, Utah. That’s where the Greyhound
bus stopped in our little town, and that morning my Uncle Herb, all of seventeen years of age,
was leaving for San Diego, California—wherever that was. Apparently in 1944 there was a war
on somewhere, and he was now deemed old enough to go and do his part. He had joined the United
States Navy, and we were there to say goodbye. Actually, I had a rather formal part in this
bus stop program. I had practiced and was now supposed to sing in my four-year-old solo
voice a little ditty that celebrated sailors with lyrics beginning “Bell-bottom trousers
/ Coat of navy blue. / She loves her sailor boy / And he loves her too.” However, as
with other assignments later in my life, I panicked in the public eye and went stone
silent. I refused to sing a note. But my silence seemed to work out all right
anyway because my mother and my grandmother and my aunts were all crying and nobody cared
much whether I sang or not. I asked why they were crying, and they said it was because
Uncle Herb was going to war. I asked, “How long will he be gone?”—not knowing then
that some of the boys were never coming home. Through her tears my grandmother said, “He
will be gone as long as it takes. He will be gone for the duration of the war.” Well, I had no idea whatsoever of her meaning.
“As long as it takes to do what?” for crying out loud—which is exactly what they
were doing. And what was “the duration of the war”? I was totally confused and very
glad I didn’t sing my song. That would only have added to the confusion, and the Big Hand
Cafe never could stand much confusion. As you might suppose, I have thought a lot
more about my grandmother’s words later in my life than I ever thought about them
in my youth. Lately they have been on my mind again, and I hope they might have some significance
for you this morning. The longer I live the more I come to realize
that some things in life are very true and very permanent and very important. They are,
I suppose, matters that might collectively be labeled “eternal” things. Without listing
a whole catalog of these good and permanent possessions, let me say that all of them are
included collectively, in some way or another, in the gospel of Jesus Christ. As Mormon told
his son, “In Christ there . . . come[s]” every good thing." So, as time goes by, we
ought—as a matter of personal maturity and growth in the gospel—to spend more of our
time with and devote more of our energy to the good things, the best things, the things
that endure and bless and prevail. This is why, I believe, family and true friends
become increasingly important the older we get, and so does knowledge and so do simple
acts of kindness and concern for the circumstances of others. Peter lists a whole handful of
these virtues and calls them “the divine nature,” and he promises us “divine power”
in possessing and sharing them. These gospel qualities and principles, as I understand
them, are the most important as well as the most permanent of life’s acquisitions. But
there is a war going on over such personal possessions, and there will yet be a bazooka
shell or two falling into your life that will prompt—indeed, will require—careful examination
of what you say you believe, what you assume you hold dear, and what you trust is of permanent
worth. When difficult times come upon us or when
temptation seems all around, will we be—are we now?—prepared to stand our ground and
outlast the intruder? Are we equipped for combat, to stay loyal for as long as it takes,
to stay true for the duration of the war? Can we hold fast to the principles and the
people who truly matter eternally to us? It is, I suppose, this quality of your faith,
the determination of your purpose, that I wish so much to stress this morning. I am
asking you to reexamine and more clearly understand the commitment you made when you were baptized
not only into Christ’s church, but into his life and his death and his resurrection,
into all that he is and stands for in time and in eternity. Nearly 98 percent of this
audience are baptized and confirmed members of the LDS Church. Virtually that same percentage
of the men are also ordained priesthood bearers, and many of the men and women here have already
taken upon themselves the highest covenants and holiest ordinances available in mortality—those
of the holy temple. So surely we have as a congregation already
thrust ourselves into the most serious and most eternal of issues. The war is on, and
we have conspicuously enlisted. And certainly it is a war worth waging. But we are foolish,
fatally foolish, if we believe it will be a casual or convenient thing. We are foolish
if we think it will demand nothing of us. Indeed, as the chief figure, the great commander
in this struggle, Christ has warned us about treating the new testament of his body and
his blood trivially. We are told emphatically not to pilfer and profane, prevaricate and
fornicate, satiate ourselves in every indulgence or violation that strikes our fancy and then
suppose that we are still “pretty darn good soldiers.” No, not in this army, not in
defending the kingdom of God. More is expected than that. Much more is needed.
And in a very real sense eternity hangs in the balance. I truly believe there can be
no casual Christians, for if we are not watchful and resolute, we will become in the heat of
battle a Christian “casualty.” And each of us knows some of those. Perhaps we ourselves
have at sometime been wounded. We weren’t strong enough. We hadn’t cared enough. We
didn’t stop to think. The war was more dangerous than we had supposed. The temptation to transgress,
to compromise, is all around us, and too many of us, even as members of the Church, have
fallen victim. We partook of Christ’s “flesh and blood unworthily,” and we ate and drank
damnation to our soul. Some of us may still be taking such transgression
lightly, but at least the Master understands the significance of the side we say we have
chosen. Let me use just one example.” At the conclusion of his Perean ministry,
Jesus and the Twelve were making their way back to Jerusalem for that last, prophetically
foretold week leading up to his arrest, trial, and crucifixion. In that most sober and foreboding
sequence of events, the Savior–who singly and solitarily alone knew what lay ahead of
him and just how difficult the commitments of his final hours would be—was approached
by the mother of two of his chief disciples, James and John. She rather straightforwardly
asked a favor of the Son of God. She said, “Grant that these my two sons may sit, the
one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom." This good mother, and perhaps most of the
little band who had faithfully followed Jesus, were obviously preoccupied by the dream and
expectation of that time when this, their Messiah, would rule and reign in splendor,
when, as the scripture says, “the kingdom of God should immediately appear." The question
was one more of ignorance than impropriety, and Christ uttered not a word of rebuke. He
gently answered as one who always considered the consequence of any commitment. “Ye know not,” he said quietly, “what
ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of?” This startling question
did not seem to take James and John by surprise. Promptly and firmly they replied, “We are
able.” And Jesus’s response to them was, “Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be
baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with." Without any reference to the glory or special
privilege they seem to have been seeking, this may strike one as a strange favor the
Lord was granting James and John. But he was not mocking them by offering the cup of his
suffering rather than a throne in his kingdom. No, he had never been more serious. The cup
and the throne were inextricably linked and could not be given separately. I am sure that you and I, being not only less
worthy than Christ but also less worthy than apostles like James and John, would leave
such troublesome issues alone if they would only leave us alone. As a rule we usually
do not seek the bitter cup and the bloody baptism, but sometimes they seek us. The fact
of the matter is God does draft men and women into the spiritual warfare of this world,
and if any of us come to genuine religious faith and conviction as a result of that—as
many a drafted soldier has done—it will nevertheless be a faith and a conviction that
in the first flames of the battle we did not enjoy and certainly did not expect. I am asking this morning that we put ourselves
in the place of James and John, put ourselves in the place of seemingly committed, believing,
faithful Latter-day Saints, and ask ourselves, “If we are Christ’s and he is ours, are
we willing to stand firm forever? Are we in this church for keeps, for the duration, until
it’s over? Are we in it through the bitter cup, the bloody baptism, and all?” And please
understand that I am not asking if you can simply endure your years at BYU or serve out
your term as gospel doctrine teacher. I am asking questions of a far deeper and more
fundamental sort. I am asking about the purity of your heart. How cherished are our covenants?
Have we—perhaps beginning our life in the Church as a result of parental insistence
or geographic happenstance—have we yet thought about a life that is ultimately to be tempted
and tried and purified by fire? Have we cared about our convictions enough and are we regularly
reinforcing them in a way that will help us do the right thing at the right time for the
right reason, especially when it is unpopular or unprofitable or nearly unbearable to do
so? Indeed, you may one day be released as the
glamorous gospel doctrine teacher and be called to that much vacated post of gospel doctrine
believer and obeyer. That will test your strength! Surely our sometimes clichéd expressions
of testimony and latter-day privilege don’t amount to much until we have had open invitation
to test them in the heat of battle and have in such spiritual combat found ourselves to
be faithful. We may speak glibly in those Sunday services of having the truth or even
of knowing the truth, but only one who is confronting error and conquering it, however
painfully or however slowly, can properly speak of loving the truth. And I believe Christ
intends us someday to truly, honestly love him—the way, the truth, and the life. Tragically enough, the temptation to compromise
standards or be less valiant before God often comes from another member of the Church. Elder
Grant Bangerter wrote of his experience years ago in the military shortly after he had returned
from his mission. “I realized,” he concluded, “throughout those years that I was considered
different. . . . [But] I never found it necessary to break my standards, to remove my garments,
or to apologize for being a Latter-day Saint.” Then came this very telling observation. I can honestly say that no nonmember of the
Church has ever tried to induce me to discard my [LDS] standards. The only people I remember
trying to coerce me to abandon my principles or who ridiculed me for my standards have
been non-practicing members of [my own] Church. What a painful observation if we were to apply
it at a place like BYU, where the temptation to compromise may come from a “practicing”
member of the Church. Even here—maybe especially here, because
we have been given so much—we must be prepared to stand by principle and act on conviction,
even if that seems to leave us standing alone. Remember these lines from Paradise Lost: Seemed in thy world erroneous to dissent
From all; my sect thou seest. Now learn to late
How few sometimes may know, when thousands err. I do not think thousands err at BYU, but some
do, and I believe that you will leave here to work and live in a world where many do,
more than Milton’s thousands. So my call—especially while we are in an environment that requires
and expects it—is to live by the highest principles and to stand firmly by your faith.
I ask it however difficult or lonely that may seem, even at a place as beautiful as
BYU. You may be tempted, you undoubtedly are tempted. But be strong. The cup and the throne
are inextricably linked. I think perhaps so far I have made you think
only of the rather obvious transgressions young Latter-day Saints face, the temptations
Satan never seems to keep very subtle. But what about the gospel-living that isn’t
so obvious and may be of a higher order still? Let me shift both the tone and the temptations
just slightly and cite other examples of our Christian challenge. On the night of March 24, 1832, a dozen men
stormed the Hiram, Ohio, home where Joseph and Emma Smith were staying. Both were physically
and emotionally spent, not only from all the travails of the young Church at the time but
also because on this particular evening they had been up caring for their two adopted twins,
born eleven months earlier on the same day that Emma had given birth to—and then lost—their
own twins. Emma had gone to bed first while Joseph stayed up with the children; then she
had arisen to take her turn, encouraging her husband to get some sleep. No sooner had he
begun to doze than he heard his wife give a terrifying scream and found himself being
torn from the house and very nearly being torn limb from limb. Cursing as they went, the mob that had seized
him were swearing to kill Joseph if he resisted. One man grabbed him by the throat until he
lost consciousness from lack of breath. He came to only to overhear part of their conversation
on whether he should be murdered. It was determined that for now he would simply be stripped naked,
beaten senseless, tarred and feathered, and left to fend for himself in the bitter March
night. Stripped of his clothing, fighting off fists and tar paddles on every side, and
resisting a vial of some liquid—perhaps poison—which he shattered with his teeth
as it was forced into his mouth, he miraculously managed to fight off the entire mob and eventually
made his way back to the house. In the dim light his wife thought the tar stains covering
his body were blood stains, and she fainted at the sight. Friends spent the entire night scraping and
removing the tar and applying liniments to his scratched and battered body. I now quote
directly from the Prophet Joseph’s record: By morning I was ready to be clothed again.
This being the Sabbath morning, the people assembled for meeting at the usual hour of
worship, and among them came also the mobbers [of the night before. Then he names them.]
With my flesh all scarified and defaced, I preached to the congregation as usual, and
in the afternoon of the same day baptized three individuals. Unfortunately, one of the adopted twins, growing
worse from the exposure and turmoil of the night, died the following Friday. “With
my flesh all scarified and defaced, I preached to the congregation as usual”! To that slimy
band of cowards who by Friday next will quite literally be the murderers of your child?
Stand there hurting from the hair of your head that was pulled and then tarred into
a mat, hurting right down to your foot that was nearly torn off being wrenched out the
door of your own home? Preach the gospel to that damnable bunch of sniveling reprobates?
Surely this is no time to stand by principle. It is daylight now and the odds aren’t twelve
to one anymore. Let’s just conclude this Sunday service right now and go outside to
finish last evening’s business. It was, after all, a fairly long night for Joseph
and Emma; maybe it should be an equally short morning for this dirty dozen who have snickeringly
shown up for church. But those feelings that I have even now just
reading about this experience 150 years later—and feelings I know that would have raged in my
Irish blood that morning—mark only one of the differences between me and the Prophet
Joseph Smith. You see, a disciple of Christ—which I testify to you Joseph was and is—always
has to be a disciple; the judge does not give any time off for bad behavior. A Christian
always stands on principle, even as old Holland is out there swinging a pitchfork and screaming
an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth—forgetting, as dispensation after dispensation has forgotten,
that this only leaves everyone blind and toothless. No, the good people, the strong people, dig
down deeper and find a better way. Like Christ, they know that when it is hardest to be so
is precisely the time you have to be at your best. As another confession to you, I have
always feared that I could not have said at Calvary’s cross, “Father forgive them
for they know not what they do.” Not after the spitting, and the cursing, and the thorns,
and the nails. Not if they don’t care or understand that this horrible price in personal
pain is being paid for them. But that’s just the time when the fiercest kind of integrity
and loyalty to high purpose must take over. That’s just the time when it matters the
very most and when everything else hangs in the balance—for surely it did that day.
You and I won’t ever find ourselves on that cross, but we repeatedly find ourselves at
the foot of it. And how we act there will speak volumes about what we think of Christ’s
character and his call for us to be his disciples. Yes, our challenges will be a lot less dramatic
than a tar-and-feathering; certainly they won’t involve a crucifixion. And maybe they
won’t even be very personal matters at all. Maybe they will involve someone else—perhaps
an injustice done to a neighbor, a person much less popular and privileged than yourself. In cataloging life’s little battles, this
may be the least attractive kind of war for you, a bitter cup you especially don’t wish
to drink because there seems to be so little advantage in it for you. After all, it’s
really someone else’s problem, and like Hamlet you may well lament that “time is
out of joint; O cursed spite, / That ever [you were] born to set it right!” But set
it right you must, for “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me." And in times of such Doniphan-like defense, it may
be risky, even dangerous, to stand true. Martin Luther King once said, The ultimate measure of a man is not where
he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge
and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige, and even his life
for the welfare of others. In dangerous valleys and hazardous pathways, he will lift some
bruised and beaten brother to a higher and more noble life. But what if in this war it is neither a neighbor
nor yourself at risk, but someone desperately, dearly loved by you who is hurt or defamed
or perhaps even taken in death? How might we prepare for that distant day when our own
child, or our own spouse, is found in mortal danger? One marvelously gifted man, a convert
to Christianity, slowly watched his wife dying of cancer. As he observed her slipping away
from him with all that she had meant and had given him, his newfound faith about which
he had written so much and with which he had strengthened so many others now began to waver.
In times of such grief, C. S. Lewis wrote, one runs the risk of asking: Where is God? . . . When you are happy . . . [you]
turn to Him with gratitude and praise, [and] you will be . . . welcomed with open arms.
But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you
find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.
After that, silence. You [might] as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic
the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house.
. . . [Yet he was once there.] What can this mean? Why is [God] so present a commander
in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble? Those feelings of abandonment, written in
the midst of a terrible grief, slowly passed, and the comfort of Lewis’ faith returned,
stronger and purer for the test. But note what self-revelation this bitter cup, this
bloody baptism, had for him. In an obligation of quite a different kind, he, too, now realized
that enlisting for the duration of the war is not a trivial matter, and in the heat of
battle he hadn’t been so heroic as he had encouraged millions of his readers to be. “You never know how much you really believe
anything,” he confesses, until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter
of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound
as long as you are merely using it to [tie] a box. But suppose you had to hang by that
rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted
it? . . . Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. A man . . . has to be knocked
silly before he comes to his senses. . . . I had been warned—[indeed,] I had
warned myself. . . . [I knew] we were . . . promised sufferings. . . . [That was] part of the program.
We were even told, “Blessed are they that mourn,” and I accepted it. I’ve got nothing
that I hadn’t [agreed to]. . . . [So] if my house . . . collapsed at one blow, that
is because it was a house of cards. The faith which “took these things into account”
was not [an adequate]faith. . . . If I had really cared, as I thought I did [care], about
the sorrows of [others in this] world, [then] I should not have been so overwhelmed when
my own sorrow came. . . . I thought I trusted the rope until it mattered. . . . [And when
it indeed mattered, I found that it wasn’t strong enough.] . . . You will
never discover how serious it [is] until the stakes are raised horribly high; [and God
has a way of raising the stakes] . . . [sometimes] only suffering [can] do [that]. [So God is, then, something like a divine
physician.] A cruel man might be bribed—might grow tired of his vile sport—might have
a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have [temporary] fits of sobriety. But suppose
that what you are up against is a [wonderfully skilled] surgeon whose intentions are [solely
and absolutely] good. [Then], the kinder and more conscientious he is, [the more he cares
about you,] the more inexorably he will go on cutting [in spite of the suffering it may
cause. And] if he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete,
all the pain up to that point would have been useless. [So I am, you see, one] of God’s patients,
not yet cured. I know there are not only tears [yet] to be dried but stains [yet] to be scoured.
[My] sword will be made even brighter. God wants us to be stronger than we are—more
fixed in our purpose, more certain of our commitments, eventually needing less coddling
from him, showing more willingness to shoulder some of the burden of his heavy load. In short,
he wants us to be more like he is and, if you haven’t noticed, some of us are not
like that yet. The question then, for all of us milling around
the Greyhound bus depot about to report for duty, is: When gospel principles get unpopular
or unprofitable or very difficult to live, will we stand by them “for the duration”?
That is the question our experiences in Latter-day Saint life seem most determined to answer.
What do we really believe, and how true to that are we really willing to live? As university
students—bright and blessed and eager and prosperous—do we yet know what faith—specifically,
faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—really is, what it requires in human behavior, and what
it may yet demand of us before our souls are finally saved? May I close by telling you how much I love
you and how much I care about what you become
at BYU and beyond. I think about you day and night, and I pray for your brightest possible
future. My testimony to you this morning is that God does live and good does triumph.
This is the true and living Church of the true and living Christ. And because of him
and the restored gospel and the work of living prophets—including President Ezra Taft Benson—there
is for each of us individually and for all of us collectively, if we stay fixed and faithful
in our purpose, a great final moment somewhere when we will stand with the angels “in the
presence of God, on a globe like a sea of glass and fire, where all things for [our]
glory are manifest, past, present, and future." That is a triumphant day for which I dearly
long, and for which I earnestly pray for all of you. To earn the right to be there may
we, as Alma said, “stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in
all places that [we] may be in, even until death," I pray in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
