The Good You Do

We all worry about our performance. We all wish we could do better. But unfortunately we do not realize, we do not often see the results that come of what we do.

I remember going to a stake conference in the East many years ago. On the plane coming home, I felt that I had been a total failure. I felt I had not touched anyone for good. I was miserable with a sense of inadequacy.

Then, some years later, I was at another conference in California. At the conclusion of the meeting a man came up to me and said, “You were at a conference a few years ago in such-and-such a place.”
“Yes,” I said, “I was there, and I remember the occasion.”

The man said: “You touched my heart. I came to that meeting out of curiosity. I really had no interest. I was on the verge of leaving the Church. But when it was announced that one of the Twelve Apostles would be there, I decided to go.

“You said something that started me to think. It touched me and stayed with me and stirred me. I decided to alter my course. I turned my life around. I am now living here in California. I have a good job, for which I am grateful. I hope I am a good husband and father. And I am now serving as a counselor in the bishopric of my ward. I am happier than I have ever been at any time in my life.”

I thanked him, and when I left him I said to myself, shaking my head: “You never know. You never know whether you do any good. You never know how much good you do.”

To the Women of the Church
President Gordon B. Hinckley
Ensign
November, 2003

Cultivating Sensitivity to Others

"And we can increase our ability to love others. Everyone deals with something difficult. We all have weaknesses. Some deficits are more obvious than others, but everyone must overcome some obstacles. Why not help each other along, build each other up, and relieve each other’s burdens rather than make the journey even more difficult with criticism?

Do Good Continually

"In one of my favorite books, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, tending a garden brings healing to a sickly boy who once focused only on his negative situation and to a young girl who was once selfish and sour. A wise old gardener teaches a principle of gardening that can be applied to our attitude toward life: Where you tend a rose, a thistle cannot grow. Good deeds and good words can help us keep disappointments and difficulties from dominating our attitude.


"We can help plant roses in each other’s lives so that the thistles of life will not choke out the joy of God’s love—and His gospel. We can help each other along life’s path by being tactful and sensitive to others’ unique situations. We can help others maintain their privacy and not gossip about their challenges. We can unify our wards and branches by supporting each other and cheering each other on instead of being accomplices to divisiveness. Then we will find ourselves enjoying more fully the blessings of living together in God’s garden."

Cultivating Sensitivity to Others
by Andrea Worthington Snarr
Ensign
June, 2008

Prayer and Promptings

"That sweet, quiet voice of inspiration comes more as a feeling than it does as a sound. Pure intelligence can be spoken into the mind. The Holy Ghost communicates with our spirits through the mind more than through the physical senses. ⁴ This guidance comes as thoughts, as feelings through promptings and impressions. ⁵ We may feel the words of spiritual communication more than hear them and see with spiritual rather than with mortal eyes. <sup>6"

 "</sup>One of the adversary’s sharpest tools is to convince us that we are no longer worthy to pray. No matter who you are or what you may have done, you can always pray."

"Learn to pray. Pray often. Pray in your mind, in your heart. Pray on your knees. Prayer is your personal key to heaven. The lock is on your side of the veil. And I have learned to conclude all my prayers with “Thy will be done” (Matthew 6:10; see also Luke 11:2; 3 Nephi 13:10).

Do not expect to be free entirely from trouble and disappointment and pain and discouragement, for these are the things that we were sent to earth to endure.

Someone wrote:

With thoughtless and impatient hands

We tangle up the plans

The Lord hath wrought.

And when we cry in pain He saith,

“Be quiet, man, while I untie the knot.” ¹¹

 

"The scriptures promise, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13)."

 Prayer and Promptings
Boyd K. Packer
Ensign, November, 2009