"Unnecessary" Toughness

On Sunday, I'm going to teach my Primary class about Zion's Camp. Zion's Camp was formed in response to the Missouri mobs our class learned about last Sunday. The band of about 200 men plus some women and children travelled a thousand miles and faced many hardships, including a cholera outbreak that killed fourteen people, only to be called off and sent back less than two months after they had set out. Their goal had ostensibly been to help the Missouri saints gets their homes and lands back, but this didn't end up happening, which almost makes me wonder what the actual point was. If God knew that they wouldn't end up helping the saints on Missouri (which, of course, He did), then why would He send them out there just to face a bunch of trials and then come home?

The purpose, as the lesson manual makes abundantly clear, was to test the faith and faithfulness of the members of Zion's Camp. Their hardships gave them ample opportunities to complain and grow bitter, and some of them did. The others grew stronger, and many of them went on to be leaders in the church. These hardships, unnecessary though they may seem, actually turned out to be good tools for sorting the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. By facing these hardships, those men proved their character, one way or the other.

And so do we. In many ways, our life on Earth is much like the march of Zion's Camp. It's a relatively short period of time with a high concentration of tests and trials designed to help us prove our quality. Just like Zion's Camp, we set out just to face a bunch of trials and then go back home. That is, literally, almost the entire point of mortality. And the ultimate purpose is about the same. Our trials are meant to test and strengthen our hearts and souls. In life, we face hardships that exist mostly to give us opportunities to prove how we would respond to them. When we respond well, that shows that we can be trusted not to react badly when things go poorly for us. When we respond poorly, that shows that we have room for improvement. Those trials often seem pointless and unnecessary, but that's because the point of them is to test how well we can endure them.

Life is full of trials and hardships, and some of them seem completely pointless, but God always has good reasons for the hardships He asks us to face. It's just that, sometimes, the main reason is to see how well we will act when we face them. So, let's try to be patient with our "pointless" trials, because, sometimes, proving that we can be patient with our trials in the entire point of facing them.