Endure And Survive

I think when some of us consider the commandment to endure to the end, we get more than a little discouraged. If living the gospel is like climbing to the top of a mountain, then we might imagine that enduring to the end is like trying to stay at the top of the mountain, even when the devil is sending forth his mighty winds, and all his shafts in the whirlwind, and all his hail and his mighty storm to beat upon us. And then if some of those storms manage to knock us off of the top of the mountain, we assume that we have failed to live up to the commandment to endure to the end. But if we have survived the very worst that the world can throw at us, if we have been beaten to within an inch of our life, but somehow, against all odds, we are still alive, then we are still enduring to the end. In the standard layout of the gospel plan - faith, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the holy ghost, enduring to the end - enduring to the end isn’t only the last step in the sequence - it’s in and through and before and after and during every part of our life. If we try to go forth in faith and we fail, or we chicken out, or we get lazy, or proud, or selfish, but then after a minute or a week or a decade we try to go forth with faith again, then that’s enduring to the end. If we repent of a sin and then not fifteen minutes later we commit the same exact sin and then we feel bad and we repent again, then that’s enduring to the end. If we got baptized and then fell away from the church and then worked things out with our bishop and started taking the sacrament again, that’s enduring to the end. If we hear the Spirit and ignore it, and hear it again, and ignore it again, and hear it again and finally listen, that’s enduring to the end. To live life, whether righteously or wickedly, in love or in hate, whether we’re still trying or we’ve given up, if we are still alive, if we are surviving, then we are enduring to the end. Enduring to the end isn’t climbing to the top of the mountain when we’re eight years old and then heroically holding on to that rock at the top with white knuckles and never, ever falling off for the next eighty or ninety years. Enduring to the end means trying to climb back up the mountain when we fall back down, or trying to think about climbing the mountain when we don’t have the strength or the energy or the courage or the humility to actually climb, or even wanting to try to think about climbing the mountain. We can be frustrated as we endure to the end. We can be disillusioned, disenfranchised, discombobulated, disgusted, diseased, depressed, dejected, defiant, determined, deliberate, delighted as we endure to the end. There’s no right way and there’s no wrong way to endure to the end. As long as we’ve got one breath left in us, our Savior is rooting for us. He will never give up on us, and whether we never give up on ourselves or if we’re in the middle of giving up for the millionth time, if we just keep on surviving, then by definition, we are still enduring to the end.