“And it came to pass that they began to prosper by degrees in the land, and began to raise grain more abundantly, and flocks, and herds, that they did not suffer with hunger.” Just as there await different degrees of glory for each of us in the world to come, so too in this life are we able to prosper by varying degrees. At the most basic level all of us prosper to some degree at least some of the time regardless of our choices or actions. God is our Heavenly Father and He loves each of us and blesses each of us. He causes the sun to rise on the just and the unjust, and the rains to fall on both the wicked and the righteous. All of us will occasionally prosper simply because our Heavenly Father delights in giving good things to His children. Another degree of prosperity awaits those who actually give heed to and obey the Lord's commands. When we do as the Lord says, we are promised that we will be blessed. As we make an effort to be diligent and obedient in keeping the commandments, we will grow to recognize that good things come to us when we choose the right, and when we choose to disobey, we often face the unpleasant consequences of our rebellion. Obeying and keeping the commandments from a utilitarian perspective of wanting to maximize the good and minimize the bad in our lives is an important and often necessary first step, but the dangers of this approach is that when we see an increase in suffering despite choosing to be good, we may come to doubt or even disbelieve in the utility of living a righteous life, since our righteous actions either did not guarantee our righteous desires or else did not completely prevent tragedy from befalling us. For those who embarked on the path to prosperity believing that prosperity meant all blessings and no downsides as long as they persisted in doing what was right, it is understandable that they might feel betrayed if they have been faithful and bad things happen anyway. But there is a third degree of prosperity that can be attained only by those who truly put their trust in the Lord and seek to love Him with all of their heart, mind, and soul. The beautiful thing about this third and highest degree of prosperity is that it runs deeper than the surface level manifestations of success and happiness and ease and security and comfort that we typically associate with prosperity. It may seem disingenuous and cruelly out of touch to suggest that someone wading through a cesspit of tragedy and sorrow could in any way be prospering but it is nevertheless possible to prosper even in such circumstances. After losing all of his wealth and his children and his friends and his health, Job did not lose his faith in God and like it or not this is sometimes what prospering looks like. Amulek was forced to watch his friends and family burned because they had become converted in part by his own words and actions and yet he held onto his faith and carried on and in this he prospered. We can choose to prosper with the nihilists and just eat, drink and be merry because it doesn't matter what we do, God is going to send the sun and the rain regardless. We can choose to prosper with the utilitarians, only obeying because we expect to be rewarded for our behavior and concluding that if we are going through pain and afflictions then we can't possibly be prospering. Or we can choose to prosper at the highest degree, following in the footsteps of our Savior, taking up our cross and prospering even when we through no fault of our own are being subjected to persecutions and torment. It is true that we are both blessed and afflicted both when we deserve it and when we do not, but if we truly embrace all that awaits us, then we will always be prospering, even if prospering sometimes looks different from what we imagined.
