THE TRIAL OF PLENTY

 

Not many of us would consider prosperity to be a trial. We all want it and we all aspire to it in different degrees. We usually consider poverty, war, illness, death and lack to be trials of this life. Prosperity, however, can be a trial like no other. Consider how President Harold B. Lee compared the test of ‘luxury’ with other tests of life:

“We’re tested and we’re tried. Perhaps we don’t realise the severity of the tests we’re going through. In the early days of the Church, there were murders committed, there were mobbings. The Saints were driven out into the desert. They were starving, they were unclad and they were cold…..Today we’re basking in the lap of luxury, the like of which we’ve never seen before in the history of the world. It would seem that probably this is the most severe test of any we’ve ever had in the history of this Church” (Larry E. Dahl, “Fit for the Kingdom”, in Studies in Scripture, 5:369).

President Ezra Taft Benson warned what prosperity can do: “While every test of righteousness represents a struggle, this particular test seems like no test at all, no struggle, and so could be the most deceiving of all tests. Do you know what peace and prosperity can do to a people – it can put them to sleep” (Larry E. Dahl, “Fit for the Kingdom”, in Studies in Scripture, Volume Five: The Gospels, edited by Kent P. Jackson and Robert L. Millet [1986], 5:369).

The sleep that President Benson refers to is the forgetting of our God and His goodness, for when people ‘harden their hearts they forget the Lord their God, and do trample under their feet the Holy One – yea, and this because of their ease, and their exceedingly great prosperity’ (Helaman 12:2).

In D&C 59:21 we read: “And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments”. We take many of our ‘luxuries’ for granted. It is difficult to relate to a life before washing machines, supermarkets, electricity and life-saving medical attention.

Recognition and gratitude for prosperity that is within our fingertips can be the easiest thing to overlook but there is hope for remembering: “We need the Spirit daily to help us remember daily. Otherwise, memory lapses will occur when we are most vulnerable. It is not natural to the natural man to remember yesterday’s blessings gratefully, especially when today’s needs of the flesh press steadily upon him” (Neal A. Maxwell, Lord, Increase Our Faith [1994] 101-2).

In Helaman 12, Mormon pointed out, in five verses, the pride and foolishness of men who do not remember God unless He visits them with misfortune (v 3-7). He then expounded on His greatness and power in thirteen verses: from His voice that can make the mountains and hills tremble and quake, to drying up the waters of the deep, to raising up a mountain to fall on a city, to accursing people forever,  to cutting them off from His presence (v 9-21)…but then the mercy….always the mercy….for those who will repent….. (v 23).

Such is the goodness of our God and Saviour. For our sake He has created this earth and made it flourish. For our sake, He has prepared all things for the benefit and use of man (Moses 2:9). For our sake, He has hung on the cross to pay for all our sins, our inadequacies, our weaknesses, our ungratefulness, should we forget. May we remember today and always to bow in gratitude for such merciful blessings of the God we love.

His gift, the beauty of the earth,

To soften the blow of turbulence

So relentlessly near;

With every movement of the trees

And the rustle of its leaves,

He whispers:

“I am here”

 

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Creator by Greg Olsen)