Q: What is the message in this print?

A: The place where the figure stands is rather dry and dusty. This is evident in the light on the folds at the hem of the cloak. There is a good deal of dust associated with this image, as there is with any trek through country that is dry, where scrub oak and mountain maple are all the woodland of which the landscape is capable. And in such a setting I think of Moroni holding fast to what he believes, to what he knows, to what he hopes and dreams.

I think, too, of Moroni’s ordeal of 30 years of hiding and being hunted—30 years of being vulnerable to all the perils, privations, and fears that stretched his soul out across a desolation we can hardly imagine. Yet such was the mortal existence of the angel he became—the angel flying through the midst of heaven having the everlasting gospel to give to all the world (John 14:6).

In thinking of these things, I am reminded that this life makes no sense if viewed outside the context of the life that follows it. Viewed by itself, Moroni’s life was nothing but grief, but to know even a little bit about what became of him afterward is to see that the misery he endured was preparation for an everlasting recompense. Moroni wasn’t simply wandering aimlessly through sorrow, he was actually going somewhere.

Q: What does the composition tell us about all this?

A: The image is a slice—a moment—cut from the years and years of hardship he endured. We cannot see where the figure has come from, nor can we see where it is bound. In that sense, the framing of the composition—the boundaries—are like the boundaries of mortality; and not just life as a whole, but life in the midst of any trial.

In the midst of affliction it’s easy to get caught in a view framed just like this print. Life looks like we’re standing still with no end in sight. No one, it seems, can or will help us. We are weary to our bones and choked with dust. Peril is everywhere and even the sky has vanished. Yet this is the picture of endurance, of faithfulness that refines the soul and fits it for the vision Heaven still has of what we are and what we will be when the trial is finished.