He Helps Us Endure

Yesterday, I failed to blog mostly because there were too many other things going on, and I simply didn't have the time. Thankfully, one of the things that kept me busy yesterday was going to church, where I listened intently for blogworthy insights, and heard a few. Now, I have a small handful of thoughts I can blog about, including this quote from Elder Oaks' talk, Strengthened by the Atonement of Jesus Christ:

Sometimes His power heals an infirmity, but the scriptures and our experiences teach that sometimes He succors or helps by giving us the strength or patience to endure our infirmities.

This is probably not what anyone wanted to hear. When I go to the Lord with a problem, I'm typically hoping that He will fix it somehow. At the very least, I hope that God would give me the strength or wisdom I need to solve the problem quickly. However, that's not always what happens.

In life, we need to face adversity in order to, among other things, develop the attributes that God wants us to have, including patience, meekness, and empathy. As such, we sometimes need to continue to face adversity, even after praying for that particular trial to be removed, so God does not always solve our problems, or give us the power to quickly solve them ourselves, even when we pray for Him to.

What God does do in those situations is help us endure the challenges that we must unavoidably face. Instead of giving us the strength to overcome our challenges immediately, He may give us the strength and patience to endure them while we must. Sometimes, we will find ourselves in situations where there are no miraculous solutions to our problems. Sometimes, there are no quick fixes. The good news is that, in the eternal scheme of things, our problems already are relatively brief, and the even better news than that is that, if we strive to be righteous and ask for God's aid, God will help us endure the problems that can't be solved right away.

I don't like the idea of having to face long-term problems and afflictions, but I'm grateful that I will never have to try to face them alone, and I look forward to the time when I can look back and think that my afflictions, while painful, didn't really last all that long. In the meantime, I'm grateful to my Heavenly Father for being wise enough and kind enough to give me the help I need, even if it's not the kind of help I asked for.