Through faith and patience, we can learn how the burdens of today can become the blessings of tomorrow.
Experiencing an overload?
Obligations, illnesses, decisions—each of us carries a load. Sometimes our loads seemingly become too heavy to bear. But Elder L. Whitney Clayton shows us that our burdens don’t have to remain burdens forever; they can eventually become blessings.
Why do we have burdens?
In order to understand how burdens can change into blessings, we must understand where they come from. Elder Clayton explains that many of our burdens are caused by conditions that we live in, the misconduct of others, or our own doing.
However, he assures us that whatever our burdens are, “we are all children of a loving Heavenly Father, who sent us to earth as part of His eternal plan for our growth and progress.” Heavenly Father allows us to carry burdens because he loves us and wants us to grow.
How burdens can become blessings
Elder Clayton explains that “burdens provide opportunities to practice virtues that contribute to eventual perfection.” Such opportunities are blessings in disguise, even though we may not realize it. In order to see our burdens as blessings, we need to exert our patience, effort, and faith, and in time we will see that the Lord is refining us into the best versions of ourselves.
We also develop empathy by carrying other people’s burdens. Our baptismal covenants instruct us to “bear one another’s burdens . . . and [be] willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort” (Mosiah 18:9). Not only does service help ease the burdens of those we serve—it lightens our own burdens as well.
Though it might not seem so today, in time, burdens will eventually turn into blessings. Elder Clayton reassures us that “through it all, the Savior offers us sustaining strength and support, and in His own time and way, He offers deliverance.” If we just trust in the Lord, he will ease our burdens when he sees fit.
Watch or read Elder Clayton’s address on how our burdens can become lighter.
Source: LDS General Conference
—Rachel Rubio, Mormon Insights
Find more insights
Watch or read Elder David A. Bednar’s talk about how each of our unique burdens can lead us to the Savior.
i think this article is a very important one to read. we already know that we should see our challenges as something that will help us learn and grow, but we don’t always remember that this is actually a blessing. to learn and grow means to perfect ourselves, which is a great and important blessing.
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