At Least Daily

There's something I'm sure I've mentioned in my recent blog posts, but it bears emphasizing. Saying that we should pray daily or study the scriptures daily or repent daily doesn't mean that we should do those things only once per day. Daily is a minimum, not an exact goal. We are specifically counselled to pray several times per day. We really should study the scriptures at least twice per day, once by ourselves and once with our families. And we should repent as many times as it becomes necessary, which is always multiple times per day.

But really, I don't think we should keep count. At least, we shouldn't need to. Praying and repenting and studying the scriptures isn't something we should do to just cross them off of a checklist. We should do them because we're the kind of people who do them. We should do them because we want to commune with God and improve ourselves. The idea of meeting any sort of numeric goal should be secondary at best.

Granted, sometimes people need a numeric goal. On my mission, I used numeric goals as tools to help me establish habits and measure my improvement. I can understand why someone might want to set numeric goals and checklists regarding what we have to do to maintain and improve our daily spiritual defenses. But once per day isn't the gold standard for any of these goals. It's a minimum, not a maximum. We should pray and read the scriptures and repent every day, but not only once per day.