Holland - "Look to God and Live" - October 1993

Elder Holland speaks in the October 1993 General Conference as a member of the Seventy.  He speaks of the world becoming a place that we do not recognize.  He speaks of violence, fears, and an assault on our children's innosence that makes the world feel very dangerous for the future.

• There is an increasing feeling that time is out of joint, that no one seems wise enough or strong enough to set it right. In many cases, governments are in office but not in power, community values and neighborhood pride are often superficial or nonexistent, and too frequently the home is an alarming failure.

In all these discouraging views, there is only one way to find optimism and hope.  That is the put our faith in Christ and follow His path to happiness.

• We need to reaffirm our faith, and we need to reassert our hope. Where necessary we need to repent, and certainly we need to pray. It is the absence of spiritual fidelity that has led us to moral disarray in the twilight of the twentieth century. We have sown the wind of religious skepticism, and we are reaping the whirlwind of existential despair. Without our religious faith, without recognizing the reality and necessity of spiritual life, the world makes no sense, and a nonsense world is a place of horror. Only if the world has meaning at a spiritual level is it possible for human beings to keep going, to keep trying.

He reminds us that God is our Father.  He is real, cares for us, loves us, is patient with us, and wants what is best for us.

• God is not dead, and he is not an absentee landlord. God is not uncaring, or capricious, or cantankerous. Above all, he is not some sort of divine referee trying to tag us off third base.

He shares an example of a young mother who has the world on her shoulders.  When the darkest moments have come to her, as she returned from the temple one evening, her 4 year old daughter rushed to her with a picture she had drawn.  She said it was the scriptures and asked her if she wanted to know what they said.  She patiently listened as her 4 year old daughter told her the scriptures say that we are to "trust Jesus."

• In a world of some discouragement, sorrow, and overmuch sin, in times when fear and despair seem to prevail, when humanity is feverish with no worldly physicians in sight, I too say, “Trust Jesus.” Let him still the tempest and ride upon the storm. Believe that he can lift mankind from its bed of affliction, in time and in eternity.

What a fitting time to hear worlds of peace from an apostle of Christ.  In the current world, we have political issues, violence issues, and emotional issues all around us.  None of these things are going to go away.  I have found peace in the current political environment as I have tried to reflect that God is the ultimate person in charge.  No man is going to be elected and save us from all our problems.  But individually, we can turn to our Father for guidance on fixing our own lives.  We can repent and come closer to Christ.  We can handle our individual callings and responsibilities by reaching out to touch the individual lives of those under our stewardship.  The way that we effect the world is one life at a time in the small area of the vineyard that God has placed us in.  God is our Father, He wants what is best for us.  We can feel less overwhelmed with the troubles of the world when we realize our ultimate partner is God in bringing about change in the hearts and minds of individual people.