Revisiting the Vineyard

Another repeat message, but it's a good one.

I do not know who in this vast audience today may need to hear the message of forgiveness inherent in this parable, but however late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines. 

- Elder Holland, The Laborers in the Vineyard, April 2012

Elder Holland is the best. His messages are always so powerful. This message on hope in he Atonement is very encouraging to me. Sometimes I think that I've messed my life up so badly that there's no hope for me - that I can't be redeemed like I wrote about a few days ago. But this message... "It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines." If that's true, there's still hope - for everyone. Including me.

If I'm going to qualify for the Celestial Kingdom, there are a few things about me that are going to have to change. I'm going to need to change my life, and it isn't going to be easy. Life is painful and difficult and frustrating, and it makes a lot of people want to give up. Yet, Elder Holland says later in this talk, "There is no dream that in the unfolding of time and eternity cannot yet be realized." There is no need for anyone to give up.

I have a goal to be like a paladin in nearly every way; in purity, in power, in honor, in discipline, and in many other good and god-like traits. I understand that this goal will take an eternity of effort to realize, especially considering how little like a paladin I really am, but if what Elder Holland said about dreams is true, I can be a paladin, or a person very much like one. I can change my life. I can be what I want to be. I can make myself better than I am.

What dreams do you have? Is there a goal you want to meet or an achievement you want to accomplish? I think it's not too late. There is, in my opinion, no good goal that doesn't warrant receiving heavenly help, and there is nothing, given heavenly help, that cannot be done. If you can pray to God with a goal in mind and ask in faith for Him to help you, I believe that there is nothing you can't do. I am going to become a paladin. What are you going to do?