Alma 13: 27-29

Since my last few blog posts have been pretty long, I'm going to try to keep this one short. Let's see how that goes.

When I listed those scriptures for Watch and Pray Always, I must not have been paying very much attention to the surrounding scriptures, or I would have seen this then rather than just this morning:

And now, my brethren, I wish from the inmost part of my heart, yea, with great anxiety even unto pain, that ye would hearken unto my words, and cast off your sins, and not procrastinate the day of your repentance; 

But that ye would humble yourselves before the Lord, and call on his holy name, and watch and pray continually, that ye may not be tempted above that which ye can bear, and thus be led by the Holy Spirit, becoming humble, meek, submissive, patient, full of love and all long-suffering; 

Having faith on the Lord; having a hope that ye shall receive eternal life; having the love of God always in your hearts, that ye may be lifted up at the last day and enter into his rest.
Alma 13: 27-29

Repentance means change - A change of behavior, a change of attitude, and eventually a change of heart. Often, we think of repentance as relating to specific sins or actions, but in a more general sense, repenting leads to a change of character. When a person repents repeatedly, they become a better person - not just in their deeds, but in their hearts. They become more humble, more patient, more loving, more faithful. They come to feel greater faith in the Lord, greater hope that they may gain Eternal Life, and greater love from their Heavenly Father. When people truly repent, they not only abandon un-Christ-like behavior and habits, they become more Christ-like people themselves.

I guess I lose sight of that sometimes. I focus so much attention on what I do or don't do that I lose sight of who I am and who I'm becoming. On February 22nd, I quoted the old saying:

Watch your thoughts, for they become words.
Watch your words, for they become actions.
Watch your actions, for they become habits.
Watch your habits, for they become character.
Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

At the time, I was mostly concerned with the link between thoughts and actions, but now I'm thinking more about the link between actions, habits, and character. It's still all part of the same formula - just on a different level. On the micro level, our thoughts influence our actions on a daily basis. On the macro level, the things we do each day determine what kind of people we are and what kind of people we become. So, if we change our daily thoughts, actions, and behavior, we can change our habits, our character, and even our destiny. That's big. And it all starts with individual thoughts and actions, just like a sand dune is an enormous pile of countless individual grains of sand. It's incredible that things that seem so small can have such a large effect, but I guess that's the power of little things in large numbers. I'm rambling, and I wanted to keep this short.

Those who struggle with bad habits and sinful behavior (which includes all of us if we set our standards high enough and are honest with ourselves about it), we may have trouble seeing that our daily attempts at repentance are making a real difference. If we slip up, we may think "I'm still slipping up, so all that repentance I did or tried to do didn't mean anything," but the truth is that it means a lot. Taking steps in the right direction is always a good thing, no matter how hard the progress comes. It takes a lot of individual instances of repentance to change a person's heart, but such changes do happen, and God, who sees everything from an eternal perspective, encourages us to keep trying. We may not see the sand dune while we're dealing with individual grains of sand, but He does. Only He knows how much progress we're really making and how much we really change.