Neal A. Maxwell
"Like Alma, who wished for a trumpet-like voice of an angel (see Alma 29:1), we too need to understand our motivations and limitations. Even so, let us use well the season in which we serve. Tolkein put it eloquently:
'Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.'
"Nephi wished, nostalgically, he'd lived in a different time, yet finally concluded, 'But behold, I am consigned that these are my days' (Helaman 7:9). Like Alma, he no doubt realized that he should not 'desire more than to perform the work to which [he had] been called' (Alma 29:6). Faith in God includes faith in His wisdom in placing us in our particular time and place, 'those years wherein we are set.'" (That Ye May Believe, p. 156)