Facing the Future with Hope

"One of today’s great challenges is learning to conquer fear and despair in order to overcome trials and temptations. It takes only a few moments for us to open a newspaper, scroll the web, or hear a news broadcast on radio or television to be confronted with distressing accounts of crime and natural calamities that happen every day.

Understanding the promises in scripture concerning how the Lord will conquer evil and how truth will conquer error can help us face the future with hope and optimism. In today’s world we see war, natural calamities, and economic crises. At times these events are not just things we observe from a distance but are things that affect us personally.

There is no need for us to mourn lost worldly possessions or to fixate on the temporal, for those things can rob us of the joy of the simple, sublime things of life.


We should all face the future with hope because we know that the forces of evil will be overcome. We should all maintain a positive outlook as we face challenges because today we have the scriptures, the teachings of living prophets, priesthood authority, temples, and the support of each other as members of the Church. We should all “come off conqueror” because of prayer And most important, we should have hope in eternal life because of the Lord’s perfect atoning sacrifice.

When our priorities are right, we will live a richer and more abundant life. Putting the Lord, His kingdom, and our families first will give us the hope we need to face present and future challenges."

It really helped me to read this article in the Ensign this week. I have struggled with all of the devastation from the recent wild fires and also from the Colorado shootings. It is easy to live in fear and despair with all that is going on around us. This has helped remind me how blessed we are to have the knowledge that we have and the support that we each have in our circles and especially in our family. We have lots of reasons to be positive. We need to have hope and faith.

It also is no surprise that I am a bit of a perfectionist and (ever so slightly) OCD. Haha! I really struggle with being patient with others that are breaking my stride or putting out minimal effort. I get frustrated when things get overly complicated and I have to put out extra effort because others are slacking. This article also helped to remind me that I need to focus on doing for the right reasons and in the right order..also to be more patient with others that are in different places and different commitment levels.

I hope that we can all have more hope, faith and patience with ourselves and with others this week. If we do the basics...the small and simple things...we will be blessed! If we focus on the eternal things(the things that truly matter) and not focus on the temporal...we will have a richer and more abundant life!

Happy Monday! Love you all!

-Deidi