Reactions and things. Also stuff.

With a day or so now for things to sink in, I'm not as fatalistic as I was last night. Yes, that was the last chance America had to turn things around. No, a conservative Republican can no longer win the presidency in the country from here on out. Yes, things will get a lot worse now.

But things have been worse before, and better people than me have weathered it. I'm sure the early Saints thought that life was pretty much miserable and over when they were chased from place to place, mobbed, murdered, and so on. Things were pretty bad in the Great Depression and World War 2, as well. The people of Alma in Mosiah 24 also had it pretty rough. But they had a great solution:

13 And it ^acame to pass that the voice of the Lord came to them in their afflictions, saying: Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage. 14 And I will also ease the ^aburdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as^bwitnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their ^cafflictions. 15 And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did^astrengthen them that they could bear up their ^bburdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with ^cpatience to all the will of the Lord.

They prayed and had their burdens lifted, so that they could submit 'cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.' How!? I'm sure they were blessed with it, but it was something in their character as well. They had enough faith to do this even though their burdens were still the same. 

And, of course, there's the big guns:

 7 And if thou shouldst be cast into the ^apit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the ^bdeep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to ^chedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of ^dhell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee^eexperience, and shall be for thy good.  8 The ^aSon of Man hath ^bdescended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

No, I definitely am not.

But if all the things in life that we pass through will give us experience, and shall be for our good...