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This devotional address entitled Nailing Our Colors to the Mast was given on September

10th of 1985 by Jeffrey R. Holland, then president of Brigham Young University.

Most remarkable age, the scope and significance and magnificence of the daily events that swirl

around us are now so commonplace that we scarcely even note their passing. Certainly

we hardly note their presence. Consider, for example, two events of this past week.

One week ago this morning, Tuesday, September 3rd, the space shuttle discovery came riding

out of a desert sky, barely tinted with the light of sunrise, and landed smoothly, silently

on the sands of Edwards Air Force Base, concluding a week-long

experience that now seems almost routine in space travel.

Does it impress anyone besides me that this 99-toned spaceship has orbited the Earth before,

that it repeatedly comes back to land safely, but it picks

up yet another payload and will again be launched beyond the Earth's gravity in the days

that lie just ahead.

Ho-hum.

Does it matter to anyone that this piece of man-made magic after traveling three million miles in space can touch

down on a postage stamp sketched in the dry lake bed of a California desert, a landing

strip totally invisible from the Santa Monica Freeway and the Carson City Nevada frozen

yogurt station.

May I remind you that there are 197 million square miles of surface on the face of this planet

onto which you can mistaken, mistakenly land, or sink, as the case may be. What kind of a world is it? Or should I say,

...