One day, while perusing my scriptures, I noticed that when I marked passages that were interesting to me, I didn’t usually mark entire verses, but phrases within a verse. Sometimes I would only mark two words, or three words at a time. Sermons don’t have to be long, sometimes they can be as brief as a sentence. Here is one of my favorite “Sermons in a Sentence:”
The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he? —D&C 122:8
Since our childhood we’ve been taught the “law of retribution”: Do good, and be rewarded with good; do evil, and be rewarded with evil. And that is absolutely true. Sometimes. And sometimes it isn’t. Indeed, it’s possible to do the right thing and still suffer. Just ask Job, Joseph of Egypt, Abraham, Nephi, or Abinadi. Yet often, when we suffer, we might ask “why?”
None of us are so great that we can claim exemption from adversity. Elder Neal A. Maxwell observed, “He felt our very pains and afflictions before we did. . . . Since the most innocent one suffered the most, our own cries of ‘why?’ cannot match His” (If Thou Endure It Well [1996], 52). When we understand the fruits of suffering, we see that “all these things shall give [us] experience, and shall be for [our] good” (D&C 122:7). Ultimately, in the final judgment, the law of retribution will apply. But in this life, for divine purposes often unknown to us, we will have tribulation. The greatest among us may suffer greatly.
(Excerpt from Sermons in a Sentence, 89).
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