The video description of a new Mormon Message titled “Reflections,” released Monday, poses the questions, “When trials and tests come, how do you react? Do you become selfish and scared, or do you face the challenges with patience, faith and love for others?”
A father is heard throughout the video communicating with his son as the son makes difficult decisions about how to treat others. The video teaches several principles, including the importance of showing kindness to others, being there for loved ones and looking outside oneself to find true happiness.
The son is shown responding contentiously to tough situations with an annoying little brother, with a woman who has run into the back of his car and, as a grown man, with his wife during marital conflict.
These scenes lead to him being shown alone in a diner. Seemingly at the end of his rope, he asks his father, “Am I even a good man?”
“I’ve always thought you were a good man,” the father counsels. “… Maybe it takes looking outside of yourself, thinking of others, trying to see what you can do. When we understand that, somehow we manage to get through.”
The man is then shown in the same tense situations as before, but this time he makes selfless decisions that lead to greater happiness.
“In our trials, let us not become bitter or uncommitted, but let us follow the Savior’s example of becoming more earnest, more sincere and more faithful,” Elder James B. Martino of the Seventy is heard teaching at the end of the video. “... Let us not complain, ... let us serve others, and let us forgive one another. As we do this, all things will work together for good to us that love God.”
Email: mjones@deseretdigital.com