¡°No pain that we suffer, no trial that
we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of
such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer
and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our
characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender
and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is
through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education
that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and
Mother in heaven.¡± (Dawn Anderson, Dlora Dalton, and Susette Green, eds., Every
Good Thing: Talks from the 1997 BYU Women¡¯s Conference [Salt Lake City:
Deseret Book Co., 1998], 22.)
¡°The Lord has said, ¡®I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.¡¯
("Isa. 48:10Isaiah 48:10; "1 Ne. 20:101 Nephi 20:10.) He knows, being
omniscient, how we will cope with affliction beforehand. But we do not know
this. We need, therefore, the refining that God gives to us, though we do not
seek or crave such tribulation.
¡°Is not our struggling amid suffering and chastening in a way like the efforts of the baby chicken still in the egg? It must painfully and patiently make its own way out of the shell. To help the chick by breaking the egg for it could be to kill it. Unless it struggles itself to break outside its initial constraints, it may not have the strength to survive thereafter.
¡°Afflictions can soften us and sweeten
us, and can be a chastening influence. ("Alma 62:41Alma
62:41.) We often think of chastening as something being done to punish us, such
as by a mortal tutor who is angry and peevish with us. Divine chastening,
however, is a form of learning as it is administered at the hands of a loving
Father. ("Hel. 12:3Helaman 12:3.)
¡°Elder James E. Faust of the Council of the Twelve has said, ¡®In the pain, the agony, and the heroic endeavors of life, we pass through the refiner's fire, and the insignificant and the unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong.¡¯ (Ensign, May 1979, p. 53.) Elder Faust continued, ¡®This change comes about through a refining process which often seems cruel and hard. In this way the soul can become like soft clay in the hands of the Master.¡¯¡± (All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1979], 38-39.)