There is perhaps nothing in this life as constant as
mistakes. From the time we are old
enough to start telling lies we all begin to fall short of the glory of God.
My Mission President once said that almost every missionary
comes home better than he left, but few achieve their potential. In that way, the mission is like life. Almost everyone grows and develops to some
extent throughout their time in mortality.
But few people reach their potential.
As I fall short of what the Lord and I expect of myself, sometimes that
potential can seem far away. That moment
when your decision becomes part of the past and you beg for help to do better,
the instant when spiritual wounds open that you know will take more time than
you would wish to close, then is the time when sorrow reigns, the heart yearns,
and sometimes all of you eternity seems to shake. I understand better in those moments Nephi's agony
at letting sin "so easily beset" him.
But those are not the only moments of life. There are also moments of joy, times with
friends and family, and moments when you let your inner light through. Those are moments of triumph, the time when
the soul and body finally exhibit what it means to be a son or daughter of
God. That is when the near-perfect
spirit that is in you stares everything that is course, ugly and dark in the
face and shouts: I WILL NOT YEILD.
There is so much destruction inside one person's head and
heart. And yet, at the same time, there
is so much hope. There is so much hope. People do defy the consensus. They break the odds and snap the laws of
nature and thrust their outstretched hands towards eternity. They choose to believe in a future that they
cannot see even the vaguest hint of. The
Savior said himself that all things
are possible for they that believe.
Christ's plan, then, is a plan of hope, not of last
chances. Not for any mistake, small or
large. One of my greatest sources of
anxiety when I do something that is contrary to the Lord's will is that my actions
may have unintended consequences that affect the lives of others in ways I
can't repair. But although I don't
understand how, I know that with time and the Atonement all things will be ok.
Elder Royden G. Derrick
once said of Christ and suffering of the Atonement, "We are not required
to go through His trials, but we are required to be willing
to go through them." Why? Because a sincere effort to become like the
Savior will eventually mean that we love people deeply enough to be willing to sacrifice
for them, and that willingness to sacrifice grows even as our faith grows. The fact is that we don't have to sin in the
exact same way as someone else in order to want to free them from their
pain. Christ never did.
Psalm 27:5 reads, "For
in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his
tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock." Isn't
it good to know that we don't have to be perfect in order to be perfected?
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