Surprised By Success

We come down to this Earth in a body that is too weak, with a mind that is too easily distracted and too prone to developing biases, with a heart that too easily wavers. Fear is more natural than courage, anger is easier than patience, vengeance feels more urgent than forgiveness. We see too little and we forget too much and we tire too easily. We are too small and too weak to take on this great big world on our own so is it any wonder that failure is all too common? We shouldn’t be surprised when we fail, we should be surprised and delighted when we succeed. And the miraculous thing is that we do succeed, more often and more triumphantly than we have any right to expect. We shouldn’t feel embarrassed or hesitant to plead for help from our Heavenly Father to get us through this struggle. Divine intervention is the only way we’re going to get through a lot of our challenges. The Savior asked us to Judge not, that we be not judged. We should not be surprised or offended when those around us fail to be as righteous or as loving or as faithful or as strong as we think they should. After all, it is so rare that we ourselves are as righteous or as loving or as faithful or as strong as we think we should be. It may sometimes be disheartening to consider the thousand other times that we’ve tried to have faith or stand up for what’s right or to love our neighbor and have failed miserably. But our Heavenly Father sent us down to this earth to learn line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little. When we try and we fail and we try and we fail and we try and we fail and then we’ve sunk so low and have gathered enough evidence of our weakness, we may yet have the humility to turn to the Lord and show Him our weakness and Have faith in Him that He will make weak things become strong unto us. Failure is normal but through the grace of God triumph is possible.