LIFE ISN'T FAIR

The Saturday night before Henry B. Eyring was made an apostle we were in Park City staying over with some friends. Maybe I am a prophetess because I told everyone that I felt confident that he would be the next apostle. (OK, I made a good guess) I had listened to him give talks over the years at BYU devotionals and he always spoke to my soul. His tenderness is always evident. His ideas inspire me to try harder. This conference he talked about trials. I like talks about trials. I think we all do when they are someone's other than our own. I relate very well to your trials, I just haven't learned that in order to grow I must deal with my own and endure with grace. This is my favorite quote on adversity and I think it is what brother Eyring was talking about:

Boyd K. Packer: "Some are tested by poor health, some by a body that is deformed or homely. Others tested by handsome and healthy bodies; some by the passion of youth; others by the erosions of old age. Some suffer disappointment in marriage, family problems; others live in poverty and obscurity. Some (perhaps this is the hardest test) find ease and luxury. All are part of the test, and there is more equality in this testing than sometimes we suspect." (Ensign, Nov. 1980)

Henry B. Eyring - With all the differences in our lives, we have at least one challenge in common. We all must deal with adversity. There may be periods, sometimes long ones, when our lives seem to flow with little difficulty. But it is in the nature of our being human that comfort gives way to distress, periods of good health come to an end, and misfortunes arrive. Particularly when the comfortable times have gone on for a while, the arrival of suffering or the loss of material security can bring fear and sometimes even anger.


The anger comes at least in part from a feeling that what is happening is unfair. The good health and the serene sense of being secure can become to seem deserved and natural. When they vanish, a feeling of injustice can come. Even a brave man I knew wept and cried out in his physical suffering to those who ministered to him: “I have always tried to be good. How could this happen?”

That aching for an answer to “How could this happen?” becomes even more painful when those struggling include those we love. And it is especially hard for us to accept when those afflicted seem to us to be blameless. Then the distress can shake faith in the reality of a loving and all-powerful God. Some of us have seen such doubt come to infect a whole generation of people in times of war or famine. Such doubt can grow and spread until some may turn away from God, whom they charge with being indifferent or cruel. And if unchecked, those feelings can lead to loss of faith that there is a God at all.