Each one of us will travel a different road during this life. Each progresses at a different rate. Temptations that trouble your brother may not challenge you at all. Strengths that you possess may seem impossible to another.

Never look down on those who are less perfect than you. Don’t be upset because someone can’t sew as well as you, can’t throw as well as you, can’t row or hoe as well as you.

We are all children of our Heavenly Father. And we are here with the same purpose: to learn to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

One way you can measure your value in the kingdom of God is to ask, “How well am I doing in helping others reach their potential? Do I support others in the Church, or do I criticize them?”

If you are criticizing others, you are weakening the Church. If you are building others, you are building the kingdom of God. As Heavenly Father is kind, we also should be kind to others.

It was not that love was thought to be unimportant, it was just that to them, love was an emotion to be cultivated after marriage rather than before. Much more emphasis was placed on the principle that marriage meant honoring a sacred commitment to a pledge. A person’s word of honor to be loyal and to make the marriage work was considered more significant that passionate attraction.

I know with all my heart and soul that God lives. I believe He will enlighten our lives with His love for each of us if we strive to be worthy of that love.

From the Lord’s condemnation of Job’s visitors, we learn much about how to comfort those suffering crises of faith. We learn that it does not help to have all the “right” answers if we do not speak the truth in love. (See Eph. 4:5.) With good cause Job complains to Eliphaz: “To him that is afflicted pity should be shewed from his friend.” (Job 6:14.)

We also learn that we risk divine displeasure when we cease to comfort and start to accuse. The Prophet Joseph Smith warned that those who see suffering come upon others must “judge not.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 162–63.)

From the failure of Job’s comforters, we further learn that the only abiding comfort must come from the Comforter. Job doesn’t need a carefully argued treatise solving the philosophical problem of evil. He needs a renewed witness that God has not forsaken him.

Sometimes, even having the right answers isn’t enough. Thus, Job’s fourth and final comforter, Elihu, utters speeches echoing sentiments that later issue from the whirlwind. Yet young Elihu’s words have no impact on Job. Evidently who speaks matters as much as, if not more, than what is said. Apart from what the Lord says, the fact that he speaks to Job at all fulfills Job’s deepest need—to be reassured that God has not forsaken him.

To our human witness as comforters, testifying of the ultimate goodness of God, must be added the witness of the Spirit that the Lord keeps company with the afflicted—that he loves us still, even now, in our desperation. Only the Lord can confirm his continuing love, through the voice of the only unfailing comforter—His Comforter.

The overwhelming message of the Atonement is the perfect love the Savior has for each and all of us. It is a love which is full of mercy, patience, grace, equity, long-suffering, and, above all, forgiving.

Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen of times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can send us to hell or paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. ...we have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.

I sometimes become excited when I talk about them, and so do my brethren.

Why? Because we are made of flesh, blood, and bones, like other men, and sometimes our feelings are warm, when we think about the conduct of our enemies.

But what do the pure principles of the Gospel teach us?

“Be still, and know that I am God, that I rule in the heavens above, and perform my pleasure on the earth, and that I turn the hearts of the children of men, as the rivers of water are turned”

This long-suffering love changes everything. As the Savior promised, it makes all things new (see Revelation 21:5). No other power calls forth love instead of resistance, changes the heart (see Alma 5:7 9), and actually makes things better rather than worse. Through His gentle example, by the voice of His Spirit, and in the faces of His children, it awakens us to life. For if we heed its invitation, we are stopped short in our arrogance or self-pity or distraction. We are humbled in our pride or anger or selfishness. Simple humility softens pride and may even redeem it.