Actually, I was out to South Dakota for a week to help dad with some of mom's and his personal stuff. We have had nice five days with him. We had the opportunity of cooking him meals, cleaning some parts of his house, and all. We just wanted to do that because we love him as our dad and remembering our promise to mother that we will take care of dad when mom passes away.
Today, I want to concentrate on a topic . . . Celebrating the meaning of change.
I truly believe that "change" is a word that only exists in this mortal life. In this existence, we witness change in action daily. Seasons, earth shifting into different landscape, cycle of caterpillar into moth, things in entropy state, growing old. We instinctively are fascinated. Why? The state we came from is very much unfamiliar with this concept, "change".
We knew forgiveness exists because things always change . . . Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow . . . Things always are different. With that entropy state we are in, we also forget things constantly.
Also, there's a miracle of repentance that only exists in this life. As Alma has mentioned,, "And thus we see, that there was a atime granted unto man to repent, yea, a bprobationary time, a time to repent and serve God." Alma 42:4
This probationary time as was mentioned earlier is only made possible because of this state we are living in. We are capable of repentance. Alma has warned that "And if their works are evil they shall be arestored unto them for evil. Therefore, all things shall be brestored to their proper order, every thing to its natural frame—cmortality raised todimmortality, ecorruption to incorruption—raised to fendlesshappiness to ginherit the kingdom of God, or to endless misery to inherit the kingdom of the devil, the one on one hand, the other on the other—" Alma 41:4
If we choose to continue what we want to do . . . We hardly will change in the day of resurrection. However, if we decide to improve ourselves, change the way we think, and have desire to do right thing . . . That's the state we will be resurrecting into. We don't change when we become resurrected. As Alma said, we are just "restored" to our former state. Alma also taught that once when we become resurrected, we won't be able to change ourselves because we are moving back into a state that we once were in premortal state.
When we are in "perfect" state, we become incapable of change.
As we consider the steps of repentance, we usually read those steps as:
1. faith in God
2. confess
3. feel sorrow
4. abandonment of sin
5. restitute
6. righteous living
I didn't realize until recently that we also need to recognize the most important step (like 12 steps) . . . We need to understand that we have to admit/accept that we have the problem the foremost. We need to recognize that prior behavior/habit we have been having is destructive to ourselves and the others.
We all must come to that realization that we are human and we need to change . . INEVITABLY. Changes as many have said are always very good. Change motivates us to be better.
How much often do people rejoice with changes? VERY often! They are happy when leaves fall, they are happy when snowflakes come out, and they are happy when snow is melting and flowers are peeking out.
We must concentrate on rejoicing how we are capable of changing. Instead of letting go of our bad habits and thinking of how people criticizing us because we did something wrong . . . We must concentrate on the opportunity of changing ourselves. We must let go of worrying so much about others hurting us and celebrate for the opportunity of trusting in the Lord and letting Him to teach us.
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