Job 5-6

(October 9, 2014)

                When we face adversity, often the very last thing we think of is to be grateful.  But that is such an important aspect of mortality.  Can we be happy when the Lord is correcting us?  We really need to develop that capacity.  I have recently been hard at work to develop an appropriate spirit of gratitude for the things that the Lord has given me that I like.  He has strengthened my testimony and helped me overcome my weaknesses.  He has blessed me temporally, such that even with everything going wrong in my life I find myself safe and relatively comfortable after the manner of the world.  I have enough food to eat and a bed to sleep in.  I am blessed more than most of the world.

                But there is more that I need to be thankful for.  I need to be thankful for the fact that I am in one of the most difficult situations in my life.  I need to be thankful for the pain that I have felt in the past, and the changes to my character that this pain helped me to achieve, and especially for the reduction and elimination of this pain as I have become stronger through His Grace.  It is an important thing to acknowledge – we need to be grateful to Him for our pain and grateful to Him for our relief.