A healthy dose of optimism

I'm a journalist at heart, and thus, addicted to the news. Not a lot of it is good these days - downspiraling economy, war, natural disasters, terrorism, bigotry and contention everywhere you turn. It's easy to think our days are the worst in the history of the world. But as it turns out, problems like these are pretty much timeless.

From this article (compliments of Brother Larsen and the H-4)

“You do not need to worry in the least, the Lord will take care of you and bless you. He will also take care of His servants, and will bless them and help them to accomplish His purposes; and all the powers of darkness combined in earth and in hell cannot prevent it. … He has stretched forth His hand to accomplish his purposes, and the arm of flesh cannot stay it. He will cut His work short in righteousness, and will hasten His purposes in His own time. It is only necessary for us to try with our might to keep pace with the onward progress of the work of the Lord, then God will preserve and protect us, and will prepare the way before us, that we shall live and multiply and replenish the earth and always do His will.” (1905)

“Naturally, believing Christians, even those who have a mature faith in the gospel, are concerned and disturbed by the lowering clouds on the horizon. But they need not be surprised or frantic about their portent, for, as has already been said, at the very beginning of this last dispensation the Lord made it abundantly clear that through the tribulations and calamity that he foresaw and foretold and that we now see coming upon us, there would be a people who, through acceptance and obedience to the gospel, would be able to recognize and resist the powers of evil, build up the promised Zion, and prepare to meet the Christ and be with him in the blessed Millennium. And we know further that it is possible for every one of us, who will, to have a place among those people. It is this assurance and this expectation that give us understanding of the Lord’s admonition, ‘Be not troubled.’” (1966)

“Above the roar of cannon and airplane, the maneuvers and plans of men, the Lord always determines the tide of battle. So far and no farther does He permit the evil one to go in his career to create human misery. The Lord is ever victorious; He is the Master to whose will Satan is subject. Though all hell may rage, and men may follow evil, the purposes of the Lord will not fail.” (1942)

And more recently: "For Latter-day Saints this is a time of great hope and excitement—one of the greatest eras in the Restoration and therefore one of the greatest eras in any dispensation, inasmuch as ours is the greatest of all dispensations. We need to have faith and hope, two of the great fundamental virtues of any discipleship of Christ. We must continue to exercise confidence in God, inasmuch as that is the first principle in our code of belief. We must believe that God has all power, that he loves us, and that his work will not be stopped or frustrated in our individual lives or in the world generally. He will bless us as a people because he always has blessed us as a people. He will bless us as individuals because he always has blessed us as individuals." (1993)

I'm so grateful to live in a time when prophets and apostles are on the earth, that they speak to God, and in spite of all the commotion and tragedy in the world, these men who see and know far more than I do find a way to be optimistic and confident about the future.