'Still walking' is the fundamental requirement

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Morning Session of the April 2004 Conference.

I really liked two talks this session on enduring challenges. The first was Sister Gayle M. Clegg's "The Finished Story." She tells about a boy in her 6th-grade school class who completed an assignment years later and turned it in to her, and then compares his effort to "finish his story" with all of our efforts to keep going with the tests we face in life. I especially liked this:

With the Lord, nothing is impossible, but we each have to finish our own story. He sends His Spirit, we call out encouragement to each other, but we have to keep writing, keep walking, keep serving and accepting new challenges to the end of our own story. “Still walking” is the fundamental requirement in the journey of life. He wants us to finish well.

Then Elder Eyring's talk went right with that same theme. He has such a good a way of simplifying and clarifying concepts for me, and this time the concept he clarified was "enduring to the end":

So many things beat upon us in a lifetime that simply enduring may seem almost beyond us. That’s what the words in the scripture “Ye must … endure to the end” seemed to mean to me when I first read them. It sounded grim, like sitting still and holding on to the arms of the chair while someone pulled out my tooth.

It can surely seem that way to a family depending on crops when there is no rain. They may wonder, “How long can we hold on?” It can seem that way to a youth faced with resisting the rising flood of filth and temptation. It can seem that way to a young man struggling to get the training he needs for a job to support a wife and family. It can seem that way to a person who can’t find a job or who has lost job after job as businesses close their doors. It can seem that way to a person faced with the erosion of health and physical strength which may come early or late in life for them or for those they love. 

I was reading this and thinking about some of our family's own challenges, "Yes! Exactly! How long can we hold on?" Then he continues:

But the test a loving God has set before us is not to see if we can endure difficulty. It is to see if we can endure it well. We pass the test by showing that we remembered Him and the commandments He gave us. And to endure well is to keep those commandments whatever the opposition, whatever the temptation, and whatever the tumult around us.…

We need strength beyond ourselves to keep the commandments in whatever circumstance life brings to us. For some it may be poverty, but for others it may be prosperity. It may be the ravages of age or the exuberance of youth. The combination of trials and their duration are as varied as are the children of our Heavenly Father. No two are alike. But what is being tested is the same, at all times in our lives and for every person: will we do whatsoever the Lord our God will command us?

I don't know why that seemed so surprising to me, but I think I've never quite considered that the whole thing being tested in this life is just "Will we keep the commandments and choose God?" It's so easy to get hung up on "did I handle this situation right?" or "was there something more I could have done?" or "why didn't I follow that prompting better" or any number of other things. And I guess those are all sort of variations on keeping the commandments…but the way Elder Eyring says it, it seems clear that just trying to follow the commandments, if done persistently, is following the commandments. In other words, continuing to keep trying = enduring to the end. It's not about, necessarily, the outcome of the trials and circumstances we face—whether they last a long time or whether they are painful for us or whether we reacted to them like we should. It's just about whether we keep trying to follow God as we experience them. I like that thought!