Repentance

To my son,

               I want to write to you today about repentance. Now that you are baptized, you have the opportunity to repent of your sins and work to improve yourself through Christ’s help. It can be hard sometimes to admit when you have done something wrong, but I know that there is great happiness in being able to learn from your mistakes and receive forgiveness from others and Heavenly Father. President Nelson recently told us this about repentance: “Too many people consider repentance as punishment—something to be avoided except in the most serious circumstances. But this feeling of being penalized is engendered by Satan. He tries to block us from looking to Jesus Christ, who stands with open arms, hoping and willing to heal, forgive, cleanse, strengthen, purify, and sanctify us. The word for repentance in the Greek New Testament is metanoeo. The prefix meta- means ‘change.’ The suffix -noeo is related to Greek words that mean ‘mind,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘spirit,’ and ‘breath.’ Thus, when Jesus asks you and me to ‘repent,’ He is inviting us to change our mind, our knowledge, our spirit—even the way we breathe. He is asking us to change the way we love, think, serve, spend our time,… and even care for our bodies.” Isn’t that awesome? We have the chance each day through the help of Jesus Christ to change ourselves and to overcome our weaknesses and mistakes. I hope that you will think each night about one thing you did that day that perhaps wasn’t the best thing you could have done, and tell Heavenly Father in your prayers about it. I know that if you do, He will help you overcome it and be better the next day.

               I’m reminded of a story that Elder Kevin R. Duncan told in general conference a few years ago. He related, “Many years ago, while I was mending a fence, a small sliver of wood entered into my finger. I made a meager attempt to remove the sliver and thought I had done so, but apparently I had not. As time went on, skin grew over the sliver, creating a lump on my finger. It was annoying and sometimes painful. Years later I decided to finally take action. All I did was simply apply ointment to the lump and cover it with a bandage. I repeated this process frequently. You cannot imagine my surprise when one day, as I removed the bandage, the sliver had emerged from my finger. The ointment had softened the skin and created an escape for the very thing that had caused pain for so many years. Once the sliver was removed, the finger quickly healed, and to this day, there remains no evidence of any injury.” Can you believe that? He had a hurt finger for years that caused him pain with the sliver in it, yet all he needed to do was put the right ointment and bandage on it for a short period of time to get the sliver out. If he had only done that right away when he got the sliver, how much pain he would have been spared! I believe this is the same with repentance—it is like the ointment that can heal us at any time if we will put it on, but sometimes we wait far too long to apply it. 

               This story reminds me of what happened to you. Sometime around the time you were three or four you must have put some scotch tape up your nose. For the longest time you had bad breath and a constant runny nose, and even the doctors couldn’t figure out what the issue was. Finally when you were five, Mom was so fed up with it that she took a flashlight to your nose and some tweezers, discovering the tape and pulling it out. Almost immediately your bad breath went away and your runny nose cleared up—if only we had known earlier! I think repentance can be like that, and we need to learn to not put it off. We usually don't need complicated solutions to our problems--we usually just need to make some simple changes that the Lord wants us to make. And it is always better to do those sooner rather than later. Don’t wait too long to repent!