faith in the future

For every worry under the sun,

There is a remedy, or there is none;

If there be one, hurry and find it,

If there be none, never mind it.

–LeGrand Richards, CN 31 March 1979,4

We must have faith in the future regardless of the ultimate eventualities. There could be no greater calamity in this world than the calamity of sitting down and waiting for calamity. We must not let the things which we can’t do keep us from doing the things we can do…. The future will always be better for those who are best prepared.


Richard L. Evans, Church News, June 25, 1988, p.2 as found in Prophetic Statements on Food Storage for Latter-day Saints by Neil H. Leash. Cedar Fort. 1999. p.184

live your life while grieving

You can still live your life while grieving. You can still go to work, go to the gym, spend time with your family. The loss doesn't have to consume you. It doesn't have to drag you down or hold you back or send your life off in a direction from which you'll never recover. Sure, you need space; sure, you need compassion and understanding, but you also need a future, a life where you have learned to be with that loss so that you can explore life at new levels. 

Gary John Bishop

Unfu*k Yourself 2023 Day-to-Day Calendar: Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Life. October 30

you have a spotless future

No matter what your past has been, you have a spotless future. … guard that future and remember that when the Judge shall summon [you], he will not look [you] over for medals, for diplomas, for honors, but for scars, and … that there be no stains between the scars.

Hugh B. Brown

Improvement Era, Dec. 1969, 95. As found in Of All Things, New Era. August 2002. 

the thing least like eternity

In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time – for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men’s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. 

The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis. 1942. p.76,77

find joy in the journey

This is our one and only chance at mortal life—here and now. The longer we live, the greater is our realization that it is brief. Opportunities come, and then they are gone. I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not. I plead with you not to let those most important things pass you by as you plan for that illusive and nonexistent future when you will have time to do all that you want to do. Instead, find joy in the journey—now.


Thomas S. Monson, “Finding Joy in the Journey,” Ensign, Nov 2008, 84–87