God Requires Us To Be Stronger

"And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good." (D&C 122:7). Sometimes things are so bad that it does not seem possible that any good can come from it. It's all storm clouds and not even the slightest glimmer of a silver lining. If this is happening, God can't possibly exist, or if He does, He is not a good God or He doesn't love us or He would not have allowed this to happen to us. But God does exist and He is good and He loves us more than we could ever know. Good can and will come from the deepest, darkest Hell. Light can and will come from the blackest night. When we are going through a tough time, we can look forward not only to the end of our suffering, but we can try to glimpse the wisdom in preparing us with the experience we need to help ourselves and especially others through trials yet to come. When we think about why we are suffering, we should think about the kinds of situations in our future for which the experience we are now so painfully gaining will be most useful. When we have weathered one storm, we will know a little better the nature of the wind and the rain and the thunder, and when the next storm comes, while it will never be easy, it will perhaps be a little less terrifying. God requires hard things of us because God requires us to be stronger and more experienced than we are. If we can see no point to our pain, no reason for our struggle, no good for the evil that we must endure, we can trust that God is giving us this experience for a reason, and though we now feel too weak to face our trials, we will be stronger and more experienced when we face the next trial.