January 5

Scripture Cross-Links

Mosiah 2:17 — “When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”
Galatians 6:9 — “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
Alma 37:6 — “By small and simple things are great things brought to pass.”
Doctrine and Covenants 64:33 — “Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.”
Reflection
Greatness that lasts is always greatness in service of others. Fame that endures is always the byproduct of a life spent not seeking fame. The most important things in your life will almost certainly build slowly, quietly, in the service of someone other than yourself. Your character. Your marriage. Your relationship with God. Your legacy. These are not sprints. They are pilgrimages — measured not in pace but in persistence and in love. Do not stop. That is the whole instruction.

Richard’s Personal Reflection

There is a dimension to perseverance that we rarely speak of — the willingness to do good work we will never see completed. Moroni, in the closing pages of the Book of Mormon, was a man alone. He wandered for years writing on metal plates while enemies hunted him, with no congregation to teach, no family to encourage him, no evidence that anyone would ever read what he was recording. He wrote anyway. He sealed his record and buried it in a hill. Fourteen hundred years later, a farm boy in upstate New York found it. Moroni never knew.
Plant trees whose shade you will never sit under. Go about doing good — not for the recognition, not for the result you can measure, but because goodness planted faithfully always grows, even when the planter is long gone.

Grandfather’s Counsel

President Hinckley simply refused to stop doing the work of God. There is a video of him walking across Temple Square in his eighties, moving with deliberate, unhurried purpose. Asked if he ever felt overwhelmed, he smiled and said essentially: I just take it one day at a time and trust the Lord with the rest. One day at a time. One step at a time. For ninety-seven years. Don’t stop.