Days of Reckoning

Growing up, I loved trips to the dentist. It was an adventure to get out of school early and go somewhere outside the normal routine. Unlike a lot of people, I never minded opening wide or having various instruments stuck in my mouth. It was a challenge to see how long I could endure biting down on the gel fluoride. And at the end of it all, I got a “free” toothbrush and a balloon blown up with the air blower and twisted into shape as an animal or a sword. Now that I’m older, visiting the dentist isn’t nearly as fun—it’s become more like a day of reckoning. Neither thorough flossing the night before nor meticulous brushing the morning of can hide the fact that I’ve gone weeks without flossing. I know it, and the dentist knows it.

Of course, in the days and weeks beforehand—usually around bedtime—the thought comes to take a minute, grab some floss, and take care of my teeth. But more often than not, the lure of sleep, or a good book, quickly overrides that thought and I go about my nighttime routine. The moment is lost, but there’s always tomorrow. Tomorrow follows tomorrow, and before I know it, it’s time to go to the dentist again, hoping that somehow, I can hide my failure and that it won’t come back to haunt me in the form of a cavity.

All too often, the same thing happens with promptings from the Holy Ghost. As I go about my day, insights may come into challenges I’m facing or a scripture I've read. Planning to write them down later, I frequently find that when “later” finally rolls around, I no longer remember the insight—or certainly not with the clarity and power it had when it was fresh in my mind. Likewise, impressions may come to make changes in my life, usually to begin doing something I haven’t been. So I make plans to change my schedule to allow for this new activity, only to find that those plans keep getting pushed aside by the force of inertia or pushed into tomorrow by the lure of a more appealing activity.

The danger of tomorrow is that by the time it becomes today, it may already be too late. Of course, through the Atonement of Christ, the decision to act is never ultimately late. But it may still be proximately late, like it was for Oliver Cowdery, who, when given a chance to help translate the Book of Mormon, failed to follow through and saw the window of his opportunity close. (See D&C 9:1­­-5.) Failures like these never hinder the Lord or his work; he will always find another servant—a Samuel or a Joseph Smith—with ears to hear his word and hands prepared to act when the Elis or Olivers fall short. The tragedy falls instead on the shoulders of those who could have served, had they acted promptly on the call.

And so, I begin this blog over a year after receiving the call (see Sharing the Gospel Using the Internet by Elder M. Russell Ballard), hoping that the window of my opportunity has not closed and that it is not too late for me to say, like Samuel of old, “speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.” (See 1 Samuel 3:9-10.)