Facing Challenges with Faith in God

Life is hard. It is a challenge. At every age life presents trials to bear and difficulties to overcome. Growing up is hard. There are often the heartaches of feeling wronged or rejected. Pursuing an education can press us to our financial, emotional, and intellectual limits. Serving a mission is not easy. It requires total dedication, spiritually and physically. The problems accompanying marriage, rearing a family, earning a living, or coping with illness, old age, and death are realities of life which we are required to meet, but with which we may be unprepared or unwilling to deal.

We will be able to face and solve these challenges more willingly and courageously when we understand that such obstacles are encountered as a natural part of living.

C. S. Lewis wrote: “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life—the life God is sending one day by day.” (They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves, ed. Walter Hooper, London: Collins, 1979, p. 499.)

An old Asian tale describes a prince who was reared in a castle and kept sheltered from the hardships of life. He never saw anyone who was ill. He never saw anyone who was aged. He never saw anyone die.

When the prince grew to be a young man, he desired to go out into the kingdom he ruled. As he was being carried along on a litter, he saw for the first time an old man, toothless, wrinkled, and bent with age.

The prince said to his bearers, “Stop! Wait! What is this?”

The chief bearer replied, “This is a man who is bent with age. Though you are young and strong, the time will come when you too must be bent with age.”

This disheartened the prince. His confrontation with aging was more than he could bear. He asked to be taken back to the castle.

After a few days in familiar surroundings he felt rejuvenated. He decided to venture forth again. This time as he passed by a group of men he noticed that one of them was on the ground, overcome with fever and convulsing in pain.

“What is this?” the prince asked.

“This is a man who is ill,” said the porter. “Though you are now young and strong, you too will have to suffer the problems of sickness.”

The prince was again saddened and returned immediately to the palace. But again in a few days, he wanted to visit his kingdom once more.

They hadn’t gone far from the castle when the prince saw a coffin being carried to its place of burial.

“What is this?” he asked.

When the meaning of death was explained to the inquiring young prince, he became depressed by the inevitable vision of the future. As he returned to the immediate comfort of his palace, he vowed he would never come out again.

The prince interpreted life to be an evil trick because no matter what a man did or what a man was, he had to suffer sickness, aging, and death.

Perhaps some of us feel about life the way the young prince in this fable did. We may feel that life is cruel and unfair to us, that we would like to retreat into our own shelter and never have to venture forth into the world. To do so, however, would be to deny ourselves the opportunities for growth which life and its experiences are designed to bring to us.

The Lord has made available to us a power which will turn these challenges into opportunities, a power which will enable us to understand the Apostle Peter’s declaration that such trials of our faith are indeed more precious than gold. (See 1 Pet. 1:7.)

With life’s hardships I have learned that faith in God develops a personal love for Him which is reciprocated through his blessings to us in times of need. To all who are meeting new or challenging times, I say: Do not fear the challenges of life, but approach them patiently, with faith in God. He will reward your faith with power not only to endure, but also to overcome hardships, disappointments, trials, and struggles of daily living. Through diligently striving to live the law of God and with faith in Him, we will not be diverted from our eternal course either by the ways or the praise of the world.

May each of us develop faith in God sufficient to fight the battles of life victoriously “with the strength of God; yea, … with [His] miraculous strength; and … mighty power.” (Alma 56:56.) We will then find the happiness we so much desire in our lives.

Rex D. Pinegar

“Faith—The Force of Life,”

Ensign, Nov 1982