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| ©Darrell Wyatt |
For the last couple of weeks or so, we have had in our car a GPS that my husband uses for work. When I drove my son to the school last night, he thought it would be fun to use the GPS to get us there. He punched in the school name, and soon we started receiving instructions. To our great surprise, the directions we were receiving were much different from the way that we have been going all these years. It took us on an unpaved back road that we would never have thought to take. On the way home, we purposely ignored the instructions and went the way that we usually go. At every block, the voice coming out of the GPS would say "Recalculating" and give us new directions to get back onto the route that was programmed into it.
I use the term "road map" a lot when I'm talking about the scriptures or other tools that we've been given to stay on the path back to our Heavenly Father, but I think that a GPS might be a better parallel. I know that I'm a creature of habit. There are just certain things that I do the same way, no matter what. I think a lot of us are like that, and there's really nothing wrong with it. The trouble comes when we become creatures of bad habits. When my husband and I were first married and not settled into any particular ward, it became very easy for us to not attend our church meetings. Our records were in limbo, so there was no accountability. No one really knew we weren't where we should be. After a couple of months, when we decided that we should probably get back on the wagon, it wasn't as easy as we thought. It took us awhile to "recalculate" our route.
When I was reading this morning, I came across a phrase in Mosiah 20:21 that I really liked. Gideon was talking to King Limhi about the adversity that the Nephites were facing at this point in time:
For are not the words of Abinadi fulfilled, which he prophesied against us - and all this because we would not hearken unto the words of the Lord, and turn from our iniquities?
I'm really a visual learner, so I liked that phrase - "turn from our iniquities". I can envision physically turning myself away from my sins. Putting my back to them. One of the Hebrew words for "repent" means "to turn". I like that a lot. I think sometimes I get off track - away from my original route. I think I'm going the right way, when in fact, my actions are taking me further and further away from the route that has been programmed in me. This doesn't mean that I will never make it to my final destination. It simply means that I need to "recalculate" my route so that I can get back on track. I need to make a turn. No matter how lost I am, just like that GPS in my car, if I listen to the spirit I will receive the directions I need.
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