Immediacy

Today Derek Marquis spoke at the weekly BYU forum/devotional. Derek Marquis is the managing director of BYU Broadcasting and shared some insight regarding our responsibility as a Latter-day Saint living in this connected world. Everything is just a few clicks away on the internet, whether it's looking up your "blind date" (thanks to facebook there is no such thing), sharing pictures, checking your grades, shopping, blogging, or listening to music, the internet can perform it. You name it, the internet does it. This idea of immediacy makes it so easy for Latter-day Saints to share the gospel, and so we should. Today, I read this from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. He relates the difficulties a missionary might face to the Savior's Atonement. I would always like to remember Christ's Atonement throughout any difficulty with I am faced.

“Anyone who does any kind of missionary work will have occasion to ask, Why is this so hard? Why doesn’t it go better? Why can’t our success be more rapid? Why aren’t there more people joining the Church? It is the truth. We believe in angels. We trust in miracles. Why don’t people just flock to the font? Why isn’t the only risk in missionary work that of pneumonia from being soaking wet all day and all night in the baptismal font?

“You will have occasion to ask those questions. I have thought about this a great deal. I offer this as my personal feeling. I am convinced that missionary work is not easy because salvation is not a cheap experience. Salvation never was easy. We are The Church of Jesus Christ, this is the truth, and He is our Great Eternal Head. How could we believe it would be easy for us when it was never, ever easy for Him? . . .

“. . . When you struggle, when you are rejected, when you are spit upon and cast out and made a hiss and a byword, you are standing with the best life this world has ever known, the only pure and perfect life ever lived. You have reason to stand tall and be grateful that the Living Son of the Living God knows all about your sorrows and afflictions” ( “Missionary Work and the Atonement,” Ensign, Mar. 2001, 14–15 ).