The Battle Rages On

A guy that was in my group at work had a sign on his cubical that read “Fight apathy, or don’t”. I always thought it was quite amusing, but as I sit here writing this at 4:30am, I feel a little apathetic. Yes once again I am on the sunset to sunrise schedule (1800-0600). That combined with the fact that there has been absolutely nothing happening and no reason for me to actually be here, but here I am waving the flag in support. It’s only supposed to be 2 more weeks and then hopefully the project will be done and we can head for home. Yeah!

In trying to fill the long quiet hours I’ve been reading talks from the last General Conference and the Church News. I came across this in a talk by President Boyd K. Packer given on November 16, 2008.

“I give you a strong caution. Be wary of the word tolerance. . . . We are not required to tolerate anything that leads to unhappiness. . . . Tolerance is often demanded but seldom returned. Beware of tolerance. It is a very unstable virtue."

Then after reading the talk from President Packer I read a talk from Elder M. Russell Ballard that was given on November 16, 2008 as well.

"It is the battle for the hearts and souls of Heavenly Father's spirit children, pitting us against Lucifer, the Great Deceiver, the father of lies," he said. "As it has always been, this battle is fought on the battleground of moral agency and free will. Regardless of the technology or the political environment of the time, it all still comes down to this: How are you going to choose to exercise your God-given agency? Are you going to choose to follow the Lord, or are you going to choose to follow Satan? It really isn't any more complicated than that. No matter how much we may try to justify or rationalize our choices, it still comes down to choosing good over evil."

Even if we don’t win every battle with the world, at least we can be on the right side.