BYU Devotional - Maxwell on Foreordination and "Meeting the Challenges of Today"‏ (Maxwell - 1978)

"Meeting the Challenges of Today", NEAL A. MAXWELL, BYU Devotional, Oct. 1978

Wonderful devotional about the doctrine of foreordination, and how a better understanding about knowing just how well Heavenly Father knows us can help us deal with the struggles of today and tomorrow, and "see things as they really are".

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[T]he doctrine of foreordination properly understood and humbly pursued can help us immensely in coping with the vicissitudes of life. Otherwise, time can tug at us and play so many tricks upon us. We should always understand that while God is never surprised, we often are.
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Properly humbled and instructed concerning the great privileges that are ours, we can cope with what seem to be very dark days and difficult developments, because we will have a true perspective about “things as they really are,” and we can see in them a great chance to contribute. Churchill, in trying to rally his countrymen in an address at Harrow School in October of 1941, said to them:

Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race. [Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, p. 923]

Brothers and sisters, so we should regard the dispensation of the fullness of times—even when we face stern challenges and circumstances, “these are great days”! Our hearts need not fail us. We can be equal to our challenges, including the aforementioned challenge of the secular church.

The truth about foreordination also helps us to taste the deep wisdom of Alma, when he said we ought to be content with things that God hath allotted to each of us (Alma 29:3, 4). If, indeed, the things allotted to each of us have been divinely customized according to our ability and capacity, then for us to seek to wrench ourselves free of our schooling circumstances could be to tear ourselves away from carefully matched opportunities. To rant and to rail could be to go against divine wisdom, wisdom in which we may have once concurred before we came here. God knew beforehand each of our coefficients for coping and contributing and has so ordered our lives.

The late President Henry D. Moyle said,

I believe that we, as fellow workers in the priesthood, might well take to heart the admonition of Alma and be content with that which God hath allotted us. We might well be assured that we had something to do with our “allotment” in our preexistent state. This would be an additional reason for us to accept our present condition and make the best of it. It is what we agreed to do. [CR, October 1952, p. 71]

By the way, brothers and sisters, I hasten to add that among the things “allotted” are not included things like a bad temper. The deficiencies of a developmental variety are those we are expected to overcome.