Not Content With Crawling

Like other Apostles before him, Elder Randall K. Bennett compared our attempts to become like Heavenly Father to a toddler learning to walk. In His General Conference talk, Your Next Step, he shared the example of his youngest grandson:

After learning to crawl and then stand, he was ready to try walking. During his first few attempts, he fell, cried, and gave a look that said, “I will never—ever—try that again! I’m simply going to keep crawling.”

Of course, with some coaching from his parents, Elder Bennett's grandson did try again, and I'm sure that he has learned to walk, and even run by now. But I'm equally sure that we sometimes feel as hopeless as that child apparently felt. We all stumble and fail. We all sometimes see how far we have to go and get discouraged. When that happens, we're tempted to give up, to quit trying, and to be content with being imperfect. But God knows that we can accomplish much greater things than the crawling we manage to do down here. So, just like any other father, He continues to reach out to us, urging us to keep trying to walk in His footsteps.

We can't give up. We can't afford to. Giving up on our eternal and infinite potential would be much like a child giving up on ever learning how to walk. To remain as we are, in light of what we can become, is unthinkable. We can become so much greater than we are now. We have to try.

The hard part is that we do try, and we fail far more than we would like to. That's why I'm thankful for a Heavenly Father who keeps pulling for me, who keeps working with me, and who "rejoices in each effort to get back up and try again." He is the light at the end of the tunnel. His are the arms that will embrace me when I get there. He is the one who encourages me to get up each and every time I fall short of my true potential. Right now, I may only be able to stumble a step or two before I trip myself up, but I'm making progress. Slowly but surely, God is teaching me how to walk in His light.