Hope across decades

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Afternoon Session of the October 1992 Conference.

I always think it's interesting to compare the same apostle's talks over the decades. My son just gave a talk based on President Ballard's most recent conference talk, Hope in Christ, so I wanted to see how this talk thirty years ago, also about hope, treated that same theme. It still seems very applicable! President Ballard says in 1992,

Many have even resigned themselves to accept the wickedness and cruelty of the world as being irreparable. They have given up hope. They have decided to quit trying to make the world a better place in which they and their families can live. They have surrendered to despair.

Admittedly we have ample reason to be deeply concerned because we see no immediate answers to the seemingly unsolvable problems confronting the human family. But regardless of this dark picture, which will ultimately get worse, we must never allow ourselves to give up hope! Moroni, having seen our day, counseled, “Wherefore, there must be faith; and if there must be faith there must also be hope.”

Then he elaborates further on how having hope will help us get through these "seemingly unsolvable problems":

My message to you today, my brothers and sisters, is simply this: the Lord is in control. He knows the end from the beginning. He has given us adequate instruction that, if followed, will see us safely through any crisis. His purposes will be fulfilled, and someday we will understand the eternal reasons for all of these events. Therefore, today we must be careful to not overreact, nor should we be caught up in extreme preparations; but what we must do is keep the commandments of God and never lose hope!

But where do we find hope in the midst of such turmoil and catastrophe? Quite simply, our one hope for spiritual safety during these turbulent times is to turn our minds and our hearts to Jesus Christ. 

It took me a long time to figure out how the 2021 talk, which I remembered as mostly being about belonging and helping others feel like they belong, related to the subject of hope which is in its title! But this older talk actually helped me figure it out. I think it has to do with how we feel when we are "hopeless" about something. I've felt that way often—about my ability to teach my children, about the state of the world, about anyone's ability to change when harmful ways of thinking are so entrenched. When you don't have hope, it's really easy to think, "Well, nothing can be done about this. And nothing will help. And I've already failed a million times. So I might as well stop even trying." It's easy to think this about any hard situation, including the ones Elder Ballard described in 2021, when people are lonely can't see how they "belong" at church, AND the ones he described in 1992, when the world seems too wicked to be worth saving.

But the answer to all these hopeless feelings comes when we turn, as Elder Ballard says, to Jesus Christ. He sounds a lot like President Nelson when he says:

Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—real faith, whole-souled and unshakable—is a power to be reckoned with in the universe. It can be a causative force through which miracles are wrought. Or it can be a source of inner strength through which we find peace, comfort, and the courage to cope.

And then he ties that in to his central theme, Hope: 

As we put our faith and trust to work, hope is born. Hope grows out of faith and gives meaning and purpose to all that we do. It can even give us the peaceful assurance we need to live happily in a world that is ripe with iniquity, calamity, and injustice.

I love that for thirty years, this good man, President Ballard, has been trying to teach us a principle I'm sure he's used again and again in his own life when trials come. I love that just a month ago, he repeated his hopeful message again:

I speak of hope in Christ not as wishful thinking. Instead, I speak of hope as an expectation that will be realized. Such hope is essential to overcoming adversity, fostering spiritual resilience and strength, and coming to know that we are loved by our Eternal Father and that we are His children, who belong to His family.