Can You Come Out To Play?

I suppose that there are few people over the age of three who don’t remember hearing that question asked of them, or if not, they themselves, asking, ‘Mom, can I go play now?’ 

Play is a natural concomitant of growing up.  It is important as a way of visualizing oneself as having ‘adult’ abilities or competencies—of growing up to be like Mom or Dad or some hero and participating in the world around us. It is a means of developing power and control of our environment and hopefully ourselves.  It is, at its best, re-creation or initial creation and discovery. 

As we get older we can play sports or a musical instrument and derive very positive benefits from the participation.  This kind of play, satisfying and fun play,  quality play, should be and usually is challenging, growth-promoting, and not damaging to oneself or others. Done wisely it can be contributive to a healthy life. 

But in playing or participating in some activities, one can get dirty or injured or lose something of great value. We can play in the mud and get grimy; we can play in the grass and get grass stains on our knees. We can play the slot machines or play the odds in various gambling endeavors such as cards or horseracing or the financial markets and lose our financial security, our honesty, our integrity. We can ‘play around’ in our youth and in young adulthood and lose innocence, freedom and self-respect.

And thus we can lose our future. 

Life is not a game.  And if we are wise we will not ‘play around’ with something as important as our eternal future.

But life teaches me that many or most people have played around to some degree inappropriately.  All of us have become unclean, morally speaking.  To regain peace, self-respect, and acceptability to our Maker we need to become clean again. 

It is possible; there is a way to redeem our future.  It is a religious way that has the authority and power to effect the needed change. 

If you are still reading, I invite you to consider my proposition. 

I concede that there are many under religious guise who assert that their solution in providing hope for the hopeless, strength for the weak, an anchor for the drifting, a cleansing of the filth is the ‘right one.’ Yes, there are some standard approaches we alone can do, religious and secular, that are needful and do some good.  But in the final analysis they do no more good than running water and using hand soap on a seriously infected wound.  The cleansing must go at least as deep as the wound and be more powerful than the infecting agent. 

The only moral surgeon who can do that is our Savior, Jesus Christ.  That is why we call Him our Savior.  He uses His ‘medical’ team to assist Him—His Church and its qualified and approved priesthood-directed helpers and approved methods—principles and doctrines, ordinances, and covenants—in short, the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  If a church has these ingredients and the Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone and the immortality and eternal life of man its objective, and if a man or woman submits to God's requirements and comes unto Him he or she can be cleansed and saved and find peace in this life and Eternal Life in the life to come.  What ‘game’ can be better than that?

I bear my formal witness and conviction to you that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is that Church.  If you are not a believer I invite your sincere investigation.  If you are a believer and have slipped you can return and repent. I have staked my life on this conviction and testimony.  I know this to be true.