Time must be taken for creative planning and for creative communication with key people. Many people become bogged down in their work with mechanical details, and a lot of trivia, and they almost become automations. Few people take the time to think very carefully about their assignments, to analyze the causes of the problems they deal with, to develop long-range plans of action to deal with them. This kind of reflection and planning takes initiative and imagination - in short, thinking, which is hard and an expression of individuality. But the dividends are rich in terms of building a sense of self-worth and self-power.

Love for Christ. This concept proclaims Jesus as the object of our love, and our lives should be an external expression of our gratitude for him. Sometimes that is difficult to do. I once visited a high priests group meeting where an older brother taught us. He noted that “as a people we often pray, ‘We thank thee for all the blessings we enjoy.’ But what about the blessings we don’t enjoy? It can be very hard to be thankful for those.” This dear man had just experienced his first Christmas without his sweetheart in more than fifty years. It is difficult to be grateful to the Lord under circumstances we don’t enjoy.

Our beloved President Benson told some of his experiences with the Saints in war-torn countries and shared the following: “One sister walked over a thousand miles with four small children, leaving her home in Poland. She lost all four to starvation and the freezing conditions. Yet she stood before us in her emaciated condition, her clothing shredded, and her feet wrapped in burlap, and bore testimony of how blessed she was.” (Ensign, Nov. 1980, p. 33.) Things we don’t enjoy must not overshadow our reasons to maintain our love for the Savior. Otherwise we may lose our perspective or become bitter, and our love for Christ may be lost.