“Special Witness: Trust Jesus,” Friend, Sept. 2004, 17
Special Witness:
Trust Jesus
From an October 1993 general conference address.
Did you know that Elder Holland once served as president of Brigham Young University? Here he teaches us to trust Jesus Christ in times of trouble.
Katie Lewis is my neighbor. Her older brother, Jimmie, is battling leukemia. But like the faithful Latter-day Saints they are, the Lewises turned to God with urgency and with faith and with hope. They fasted and prayed, prayed and fasted. And they went again and again to the temple.
One day Sister Lewis came home from a temple session weary and worried. As she entered her home, four-year-old Katie ran up to her with love in her eyes and a crumpled sheaf [stack] of papers in her hand. Holding the papers out to her mother, she said enthusiastically, “Mommy, do you know what these are?”
Sister Lewis smiled through her sorrow and said, “No, Katie. I don’t know what they are. Please tell me.”
“They are the scriptures,” Katie beamed back, “and do you know what they say?”
Sister Lewis knelt down to her level and said, “Tell me, Katie. What do the scriptures say?”
“They say, ‘Trust Jesus.’”
Sister Lewis said that as she stood back up, she felt arms of peace encircle her weary soul and a divine stillness calm her troubled heart.
In a world of discouragement, sorrow, and sin, in times when fear and despair seem to prevail, I too say, “Trust Jesus.” Believe that He can lift mankind from its bed of affliction [trouble], in time and in eternity.
Painting by Paul Mann