Pioneers - Struggles and Strength

Today, I went Home Teaching, and in reading the First Presidency message, I found a quote that I'd been looking for:

We sometimes look back on what the pioneers endured and with relief say, “Thank goodness I didn’t live in that time.” But I wonder if those courageous pioneers, had they been able to see us today, might not have voiced the same concern.

I noticed that President Uchtdorf didn't say that the pioneers would have felt the same way about our trials as we feel about theirs; he just wonders if they might have. But still, I wondered why they might have, until I looked more closely at another part of his article:

In our time—when so much of what we desire is so easily within our reach—it is tempting to turn aside or give up whenever the road ahead seems a little bumpy or the slope tends to rise steeply before us. . . .

The pioneers learned that doing hard things deepened and strengthened body, mind, and spirit; magnified their understanding of their divine nature; and heightened their compassion for others. This habit firmed their souls and became a blessing to them long after their trek across the plains and mountains had ended.

By facing the hardships that many of us (thankfully) never have to face, the pioneers drew closer to the Lord and gained the strength they needed to overcome their challenges. If they were to look at our lives of relative ease after gaining the wisdom they could only have gained on the trail, they might have wondered how we could possibly gain the same strength they did without also facing such intense trials. Exercise works by pushing a person to their limits. If our experiences aren't pushing us to the limits of our strength, they won't have the capacity to make us stronger.

So, perhaps it isn't just a different kind of trials the pioneers might have been concerned about  facing, but a lack of trials altogether. Perhaps they might have been worried that if their lives were as easy as ours, they wouldn't have gained the strength that they eventually came to rely on. The pioneers became as strong as they were by facing terrible trials. Without facing such trials, we might easily remain weak.

But we don't have to. Even though we aren't forced to fight for our survival or freedom of religion (yet), we should still stand up to defend them, and defending the merits of our beliefs and practices will probably enough of a challenge to give us an opportunity to grow from it. Our circumstances aren't forcing us to climb mountains, but the mountains are still they, and we know that we really ought to climb them and plant our banners on them. If we do, we may be able to develop the same kind of courage the pioneers had gained.

We have it relatively easy, compared to the pioneers. In fact, we have it so easy that we aren't regularly forced to develop moral courage and strength, like the pioneers were. But we still have opportunities to exercise moral strength and courage, and as we do so, we can gain more courage and strength. We can become as strong as the pioneers were. We just have to go a little bit out of our way to do it.