"In mine Adversity, I will be as Peter, a Rock"
-Sonya L. R. Just
1 Peter 4:12-13
12 Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery atrial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:
13 But arejoice, inasmuch as ye are bpartakers of Christ’s csufferings; that, when his glory shall be drevealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks explains: "
Adversity will be a constant or occasional companion for each of us throughout our lives. We cannot avoid it. The only question is how we will react to it. Will our adversities be stumbling blocks or stepping stones?" The only way to endure, the only way to make adversity into stepping-stones, is by turning to Christ.
..."No pain suffered by man or woman upon the earth will be without its compensating effects if it be suffered in resignation and if it be met with patience.” President Spencer W. Kimball
Viktor Frankl
March 26, 1905 -
September 2, 1997
Author of Man's Search for Meaning,
Holocaust survivor
In the preface to Frankl’s book, Man's Search for Meaning, Gordon W. Allport writes:
Frankl:
"...in one life there is love for one's children to tie to; in another life, a talent to be used; in a third, perhaps only lingering memories worth preserving... As a long-time prisoner in bestial concentration camps he [Viktor Frankl] found himself stripped to naked existence. His father, mother, brother, and his wife died in camps or were sent to gas ovens, so that, excepting for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps. How could he - every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination - how could he find life worth preserving?"
Frankl references Nietzsche, "he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," and argues that what made the difference between those who survived and those who did not was not the intensity of their suffering, but whether or not they retained meaning and purpose in their lives.
Frankl writes of his experience as the guards herded them in forced labor in the Nazi concentration camp:
“We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road running through the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk.” Even there, in the degradation and abject misery of a concentration camp, Frankl was able to exercise the most important freedom of all - the freedom to determine one's own attitude and spiritual well-being. No Nazi SS guard was able to take that away from him or control the inner-life of Frankl's soul. One of the ways he found the strength to fight to stay alive and not lose hope was to think of his wife. Frankl clearly saw that it was those who had nothing to live for who died quickest in the concentration camp. It was as he contemplated his beloved wife that a transcending thought came to Frankl: “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth--that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”
Frankl continues, “My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, and the thoughts of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of that image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how.'”
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
“The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.”
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."
Man's Search for Meaning, p.172
"In mine Adversity, I will be as Peter, a Rock"
-Sonya L. R. Just
1 Peter 4:12-13
12 Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery atrial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you:
13 But arejoice, inasmuch as ye are bpartakers of Christ’s csufferings; that, when his glory shall be drevealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.
Elder Dallin H. Oaks explains: "Adversity will be a constant or occasional companion for each of us throughout our lives. We cannot avoid it. The only question is how we will react to it. Will our adversities be stumbling blocks or stepping stones?" The only way to endure, the only way to make adversity into stepping-stones, is by turning to Christ.
..."No pain suffered by man or woman upon the earth will be without its compensating effects if it be suffered in resignation and if it be met with patience.” President Spencer W. Kimball
Viktor Frankl
March 26, 1905 -
September 2, 1997
Author of Man's Search for Meaning,
Holocaust survivor
In the preface to Frankl’s book, Man's Search for Meaning, Gordon W. Allport writes:
Frankl:
"...in one life there is love for one's children to tie to; in another life, a talent to be used; in a third, perhaps only lingering memories worth preserving... As a long-time prisoner in bestial concentration camps he [Viktor Frankl] found himself stripped to naked existence. His father, mother, brother, and his wife died in camps or were sent to gas ovens, so that, excepting for his sister, his entire family perished in these camps. How could he - every possession lost, every value destroyed, suffering from hunger, cold and brutality, hourly expecting extermination - how could he find life worth preserving?"
Frankl references Nietzsche, "he who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," and argues that what made the difference between those who survived and those who did not was not the intensity of their suffering, but whether or not they retained meaning and purpose in their lives.
Frankl writes of his experience as the guards herded them in forced labor in the Nazi concentration camp:
“We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road running through the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk.” Even there, in the degradation and abject misery of a concentration camp, Frankl was able to exercise the most important freedom of all - the freedom to determine one's own attitude and spiritual well-being. No Nazi SS guard was able to take that away from him or control the inner-life of Frankl's soul. One of the ways he found the strength to fight to stay alive and not lose hope was to think of his wife. Frankl clearly saw that it was those who had nothing to live for who died quickest in the concentration camp. It was as he contemplated his beloved wife that a transcending thought came to Frankl: “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth--that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”
Frankl continues, “My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn't even know if she were still alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, and the thoughts of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of that image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death."
“The one thing you can’t take away from me is the way I choose to respond to what you do to me. The last of one’s freedoms is to choose ones attitude in any given circumstance.”
“When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.”
“Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how.'”
“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”
“The last of human freedoms - the ability to chose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances.”
"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."
Man's Search for Meaning, p.172
