Anvil of adversity

So, when you are being hammered on the anvil of adversity, when your soul is being refined with severe lessons that perhaps cannot be learned in any other way, don’t cut and run. Don’t jump ship. Don’t shake your fist at your bishop or your mission president or God. Please stay with the only help and strength that can aid you in that painful time. When you stumble in the race of life, don’t crawl away from the very Physician who is unfailingly there to treat your injuries, lift you to your feet, and help you finish the course.

We don’t know why all of the things that ­happen to us in life happen, why sometimes we are spared a tragedy and sometimes we are not. But that is where faith must truly mean something, or it is not faith at all. In such severe circumstances, rare as we hope they are, we can fall back on Alma’s reminder that faith and knowledge are related, but they are not synonymous. In some matters you can have knowledge, even perfect knowledge, but in some things, faith will have to do until knowledge comes.

— [[Jeffrey R. Holland]]