Doctrine and Covenants 80:3

"Wherefore, go ye and preach my gospel, whether to the north or to the south, to the east or to the west, it mattereth not, for ye cannot go amiss."
Doctrine and Covenants 80:3


I'm thinking today of the tendency we have to give up when we've gone off track.  We often think, well... we screwed that up, so really, what is the point?  Why try anymore?  We think that we did some bad things, and that we are now bad *people* ... and that there just isn't any hope left.
Every time we think those things, we are dead wrong.  There is never a point in our lives where *God* thinks those things, or gives up on us.  There is NEVER a point where he isn't stretching out his arm to us, offering hope and forgiveness and redemption.  Something out of our patriarchal blessing didn't happen?  We're too old to change, or go back, or we screwed up the only thing that would make it better?  ... Forgive me, but all of those, AND [Fill in any other excuse here] are all loads of manure.  In no case, for no person, is it ever too late to return to God. God knows us.  He knows exactly what we've done, knows where we are and what we need, and he still offers it to us.  It might be hard... almost certainly it will be hard.  That's earth life. :)  We have a lot to re-learn, and changing our hearts is sometimes painful.  But we can't wimp out with excuses.  This is GOD we're talking about... eternity, everything... our souls.  How is anything, especially a little effort, worth giving up all that?
In this verse, God tells Stephen Burnett that he can go anywhere he wants, and it doesn't matter.  He can't go amiss.  Now, Stephen Burnett was being called on a mission, and it is true that it is hard to go wrong when you are preaching the gospel... but I submit to you that it is hard to go permanently wrong in life as well.  Like in a video game, we get lots of re-dos and extra lives, and the only way to really fail is to *choose* to quit.  Today, let's not choose that.  Let's get up, brush ourselves off, and try again.  Let's take the hand that God is offering us, and keep improving... learning more, and becoming better than we were yesterday.  If we have to go slow, that's okay.  It only matters that we are traveling in the right direction... that we are trying and not quitting and walking away.  Don't quit.  Please.