Crying with the Saints | Glenn L. Pace, Dec 1987

Although the world's path may seem easier, the sanctifying and refining tears that come from a life of discipleship "give way to eternal tears of joy." This speech was given on December 13, 1987 Read the speech here: https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/glenn-... Read more about Glenn L. Pace here: https://speeches.byu.edu/speakers/gle... Read more on overcoming adversity here: https://speeches.byu.edu/collections/... Subscribe to BYU Speeches for the latest videos:    / @byuspeeches   Read and listen to more BYU Speeches here: https://speeches.byu.edu/ Follow BYU Speeches: Facebook:   / byuspeeches   Twitter:   / byuspeeches   Instagram:   / byuspeeches   Pinterest:   / byuspeeches   © Brigham Young University. All rights reserved. "Several years ago I heard a popular song that contained the line “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.” My immediate reaction was anger. The next day I heard the song again, and I laughed at myself because in the interim I had figured out why the line made me so mad. It was because it sounded so true! In grade school, while others went to the movies, my parents made me go to church. In junior high school, I collected fast offerings while others slept until noon. In high school, I passed up working on Sunday and earning double time at a grocery store so I could keep the Sabbath day holy. During my mission, for two years, I walked down the streets on Saturday nights with my companion while everyone else our age drove past us with their dates, laughing, pointing, and asking, “What’s with those guys?” As a young married couple, we attended church with our squirming children. On Super Bowl Sunday, while the world ate, drank, and cheered, we could be found pulling the hair and flipping the heads or ears of our children and encouraging them to listen to the words of a member of the stake high council. While traveling in our old clunker of a station wagon, we would pull up alongside a Mercedes-Benz. The occupants, with their national average 1.7 kids dressed in designer jeans, would point and laugh at my six kids dressed in their Toughskins. Now do you see why that line made me so mad? My frustration peaked last year when my college-age kids prevailed in getting me to attend a concert in this very facility (no sacrifice is too great for my kids). When the singer announced the song from which this line is taken, the crowd went wild. He said, “I’m not trying to convert anyone, I just want to provide you with an alternative.” I thought the roof was going to come off this place. I wanted to race down the steps, grab the microphone, and give my opinion on the subject. Of course, my kids would have been horrified, and you would have thought me tacky. The statement “sinners laugh and saints cry” is a simplistic generalization at best. We Saints definitely have our share of laughter, and some sinners leave a trail of broken lives and buckets of tears. For saints as well as sinners, all that is meaningful in life doesn’t have to be funny. However, to brush aside the meaning of the line in the song with this equally simplistic argument would be to ignore a reasonable question. At a given point in time, don’t many who make no effort to live the Church standards appear to be enjoying life more than those who do? Our lives seem to be controlled by inhibitions, constraints, service, sacrifice, guilty consciences, and financial obligations. “For Thy Good” In the world we see people with none of these so-called restrictions who are home with their kids on more than just Monday night. And they have ten to fifteen percent more of their gross income to spend. By the time we meet our financial obligations, it seems we can’t afford to do anything wrong. Let’s be honest with ourselves: the Saints do a lot of crying. However, nothing worth having is free. The celestial happiness we seek does not come without a price. We obtain celestial joy the old-fashioned way—we earn it. The voguish phrase “no pain, no gain” applies equally well to things of the Spirit. Sometimes we cry out, “What have I done wrong to deserve this?” Often trials and tribulations are allowed to come into our lives because of what we are doing right. We are striving for the purification and sanctification that will lead us to exaltation. We all must pass through a certain amount of sacrifice that makes our spirits pliable in the hands of the Lord. Joseph Smith’s life helps us understand this principle somewhat. By all outward appearances, there was probably not a darker period in his life than the winter of 1838–39 when he was imprisoned in Liberty Jail. The Saints were being persecuted, robbed, and murdered, and there were dissension and apostasy in the ranks." –Glenn L. Pace