FINDING HAPPINESS

“Patience is...clearly not fatalistic, shoulder-shrugging resignation. It is the acceptance of a divine rhythm to life; it is obedience prolonged. Patience stoutly resists pulling up the daisies to see how the roots are doing.“
— Neal A. Maxwell

Patience with us can last a life time. Do we have the patience to find happiness?

The story is told of a boy who came from a poor family and frequently went to bed hungry. His father had died early and his mother did her best to support the boy and his five siblings but there was never enough food to feed everyone.

Miraculously, he was able to survive his youth and through a series of honest circumstances, amassed a great deal of wealth. The more riches he made, the more he desired to make, as if to guarantee that he would never go hungry again. Still, his accumulated wealth did not make him happy or even give him a sense of security. Wealth had become his god.

One day as he passed a ragged little orphan boy on the street, begging for bread, he realized the reason for his lack of joy. All these years he had been bathing in his own selfishness. Gradually he turned his feelings outward to others and as he did so he found the real God.

He began donating funds to local orphanages, hiring the unskilled and less fortunate and training them in his factories. He was liberal in his praise and wages and instead of losing money, became the most sought after employer in the region. He became very happy.

Every day became a joy to him and his donations to a variety of charities were well known. The more he gave, the more he got. He lived to a grand old age and died joyfully, wrapped in the loving arms of family and friends. His funeral was well attended by old and young alike. Many honest tears were shed at his passing and what was the secret of his happiness? We know the answer to that.

"It is extremely important for you to believe in yourselves not only for what you are now but for what you have the power to become. Trust in the Lord as He leads you along. He has things for you to do that you won't know about now but that will unfold later. If you stay close to Him, You will have some great adventures… The Lord will unfold your future bit by bit."
— Neal A. Maxwell

SOME THINGS TO PONDER ABOUT AFTERLIFE

The following is taken from Hugh Nibley’s Book, Approaching Zion, beginning on page 409:

“Mountains and hills, great rivers and small streams, surely impart variety and beauty to the scene… Some students have complained that having to live on a Urim and Thummim, a sea of glass, no less, must be infinitely boring. How wrong they are! The face of the Urim and Thummim is no featureless flatland; rather, as Abraham found out, it can give you more dimensions than you can even imagine.

It is true, you have to exercise your mind in that environment, but where would you not wish to do that? If you want scented breezes over purple seas, the Urim and Thummim will gladly oblige; if it’s towering mountains you want, you can have them, too. Whatever it is you yearn to experience, that marvelous instrument can put you into the picture, if you only know how to operate it. This is not entirely (lacking in serious intent); after all, we have already anticipated the miracle in the device to which almost all Americans resort daily and nightly in order to retreat into other worlds, (the TV set).

So what (else) will we do (in the) forever? The movie studio imagines something like an eternal family reunion held in the city park with everybody sitting or standing around in old-fashioned nightgowns in an exchange of insipid smiles and small talk. After twenty minutes of that, anyone would settle for inferno.

If the question of what we will be doing in eternity stumps us, it should. That’s the whole point: if we knew the answer we’d have little enough to look forward to. The only way to know what fun lies ahead on the other side is to experience it, because as (the Apostle) Paul tells us, as long as we are here we can’t even begin to imagine what any of it is like: ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man…’ (1 Corinthians 2:9). No use trying to figure it out; you will just have to wait and see. And the gospel invites us to move toward the unknown."