“A resistance to anything that limits one’s conduct has almost taken over society. Our whole social order could self-destruct over the obsession with freedom disconnected from responsibility, where choice is imagined to be somehow independent of consequences” [President Boyd K. Packer, Ensign, May 1996.]

To Live Well

Elder Richard G. Scott, To Live Well, April 21, 2011, BYU Spring 2011 Commencement

Sixth, smile. I don’t need to teach you that. Just being on this campus teaches the importance of knowing how to smile and enjoy life. I don’t mean by that that you need to be cracking jokes every day. But a good joke now and then is an escape valve. It is not all that bad. You will soon learn that everybody has problems and nobody wants to hear about yours. Put those things aside and smile. Have a good sense of humor as the prophets do. I wish I could tell you some of the things that we talk about. Not flippant things, not things that are inappropriate—just a good sense of humor. Today we are a little more serious than usual, but I will tell you a secret of how to wake up in the morning with a smile on your face no matter how you feel. Now I’ll have to whisper, because this is a secret. If you want to wake up in the morning guaranteed to have a smile on your face, go to bed with a coat hanger in your mouth. Remember, a good sense of humor helps you greatly.

Seventh, don’t complain. Life isn’t always fair. That’s a fact. But it’s always charged with marvelous opportunities if you know how to find them. I remember once when I was working as hard as I knew how. I happened to be working for a man who took all of the ideas and suggestions and work that I did and passed them on to his superior as though they were his own suggestions. For a while I was really upset about that. As I pondered it, a thought came to me, and I decided from then on I would write reports to him of everything that I was doing or trying to do, and I sent a copy to his boss. He didn’t like that, but it worked beautifully.

Gain Mastery and then Enslave Them

"We again warn our people in America of the constantly increasing threat against our inspired Constitution and our free institutions set up under it.  The same political tenets and philosophies that have brought war and terror in other parts of the world are at work amongst us in America.  The proponents thereof are seeking to undermine our own form of government and to set up instead one of the forms of dictatorships now flourishing in other lands.  These revolutionists are using a technique that is as old as the human race - - a fervid but false solicitude for the unfortunate over whom they thus gain mastery and then enslave them." [Elder J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, Apr. 1942, 88-97]

Great Transfer Board in the Sky

“We do not control what I call ‘the great transfer board in the sky.’ The inconveniences that are sometimes associated with release from our labors here are necessary in order to accelerate the work there. Heavenly Father can’t do His work there, with 10 times more people than we have on this planet, without on occasion taking some of the very best sisters and brothers from among us. The conditions of termination here, painful though they are, are a part of the conditions of acceleration there. Thus we are back to faith in the timing of God, and to our need to be able to say ‘Thy timing be done,’ even when we do not fully understand it” (Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, July 2002).

God is in the Details

"Recall the new star that announced the birth at Bethlehem? It was in its precise orbit long before it so shone. We are likewise placed in human orbits to illuminate. Divine correlation functions not only in the cosmos but on this planet, too. After all, the Book of Mormon plates were not buried in Belgium, only to have Joseph Smith born centuries later in distant Bombay....God, who oversees the interlacings of galaxies, stars, and worlds, asks us to confess His hand in our personal lives, too. Have we not been reassured about the fall of one sparrow and that the very hairs of our heads are numbered?. God is in the details! Just as the Lord knows all of His vast creations, He also knows and loves each in any crowd—indeed, He knows and loves each and all of mankind!...Of course we cannot fully comprehend all this right now! Of course we cannot know the meaning of all things right now. But we can know, right now, that God knows us and loves us individually!" (Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Encircled in the Arms of His Love, Ensign, November 2002, p.16)

Get it First Hand

"There is an increase in the attendance of the people at meetings. There is nothing that causes the people to grow more in the Gospel than attending their meetings. There is nothing that is more calculated to cause the spirit of the Gospel to dry up, figuratively speaking, than to stay away from our meetings. When we are in a meeting we partake of the spirit of that meeting. When we are absent from it and somebody tells us of the wonderful spirit that was present and what was accomplished by being there to partake of it, we cannot appreciate those things. It is very much like the man who was hungry and someone told him of a fine dinner, but he did not appreciate that dinner. We have to eat for ourselves, we have to live for ourselves, we have to be in the line of our duty in order to partake of the Spirit of the Lord, if the Spirit of the Lord is manifest.

I call to mind that a brother who lost his standing as an apostle was a very, very poor attendant at the meetings of the Council of the Twelve, other matters occupied his attention. Francis M. Lyman had to come from Tooele the night before our meeting and spend one night here and all day in order to be at the meetings of the Presidency and Apostles which lasted two or three hours, but he never missed one of them. I said to him one day: 'It is remarkable to me that you are so prompt and always present at our meetings.' He said: 'I do not want to miss any inspiration from the Lord; I do not want the Spirit of the Lord to come to me second hand. I want to partake of it, and to feel it, and to realize it, and to know it for myself'" (President Heber J. Grant, CR, October 1934, p.122-123).

Do Your Homework

Years ago I was asked to chair a committee of faculty from Brigham Young University and other schools with this question to study: What should be the future of higher education in the Church? Elder Neal A. Maxwell was then the commissioner of education. I told him I didn't think I could fulfill the assignment without the help of heaven. He asked if I would like a blessing. I've forgotten how it was arranged that I would see Elder Alvin R. Dyer, but that was especially pleasant for me, since I had been a priest once in a ward where he was the bishop, the president of my quorum. He listened sympathetically to my story, put his hands on my head, and gave me a blessing that included words like this as a promise: "In this assignment, and in many others which will come to you, your mind will be guided in channels toward the truth." That blessing gave me confidence, maybe too much confidence. The committee began its work. And after months of what seemed to me futile effort, I felt some desperation, much as you do when heaven seems to withhold its help in a task you know matters and is beyond you. I somehow managed to arrange another interview. This one was with President Harold B. Lee. He received me in a kindly way. In my anxiety, I soon blurted out my question: "President Lee, how do I get revelation?" He smiled. I am glad he didn't laugh, since it was an odd question to ask. But he answered my question with a story. It was essentially this. He said that during World War II he had been part of a group studying the question "What should the Church be doing for its members in the military service?" He said they conducted interviews at bases up and down the country. They had data gathered. They had the data analyzed. They went back for more interviews. But still, no plan emerged. Then he gave me the lesson, which I now give to you, in about these words: "Hal, when we had done all we knew how to do, when we had our backs to the wall, then God gave us the revelation. Hal, if you want to get revelation, do your homework." (see D&C 9:3-10) [From Elder Henry B. Eyring, To Draw Closer to God: A Collection of Discourses, p.91-103,105]