Baby Steps Toward Perfection

Yesterday, a student came to the Writing Center with a paper he was wiritng about his educational goal. He planned to become a doctor - a neurosurgeon, he had said - which is a lofty goal for anyone, but the student seemed to have some understanding of this. In his paper, he said that his time at Sac City Community College was the first baby step toward his goal.

Like this student, we each have a lofty goal ahead of us. We are striving for eternal life and moral perfection. We have a long way to go to get there, but we can get there by persistently taking "baby steps" toward our goal.

As Elder Larry R. Lawrence said in his General Conference talk, What Lack I Yet?:

Be persistent, brothers and sisters, but never be discouraged. We will have to go beyond the grave before we actually reach perfection, but here in mortality we can lay the foundation. “It is our duty to be better today than we were yesterday, and better tomorrow than we are today.”

Elder Lawrence also said that we must be "on a course of steady improvement [to not] miss out on the important experiences God wants to give us," and that "our direction is ever more important than our speed." As long as we're moving forward, it doesn't matter much how quickly or how slowly we're moving. Perfection may be an eternity away, but even the baby steps we take in mortality will eventually get us there.

We and my student from yesterday have long roads ahead of us, and it may seem like we're not making very much progress in our day-to-day activities, but as long as we're persistent in our efforts, no matter how meager they are, we will eventually reach our goals, no matter how lofty they are.