Beginning to Be…

We often speak of things we would like to do—or like to be. But so often, it seems, there is some distance between where we are and where we wish we were, and it takes effort to cover any distance in any direction—mental or physical effort. We have to begin sometime to go where we want to go. Nobody ever will (because nobody ever can) pour into us knowledge or skill or talent or attainment without our own effort. It isn’t unusual to hear someone say he would like to perform, like to play the piano, or like to follow some profession. But the answer simply is that we have to so the studying, the practicing, the preparing. We have to take the steps between where we are and where we wish we were. And short or sudden burst of energy, or occasional practice or performance isn’t the answer. It requires consistency, the doing day after day of what needs to be done: one step at a time, one fact at a time, one phrase at a time, one line memorized, one lesson learned, one thing thought through. A great counselor once gave this profoundly good counsel: “Look twenty years ahead. Decide what you want to be.” Time is going to go anyway, whether we use it well or waste it away. And we had just as well used it to go where we want to go. We can give our children incentive and opportunity and counsel and encouragement. We can pay the bills—for the tools, the teachers, and for all the physical necessities. But we can’t learn for our children; we can’t memorize for them, or practice for them, or think for them, or make of them anything they are not willing to pay the practice of by their own efforts. And it appears doubtful indeed that the Lord God himself will make any of us anything we are not willing to pay the price to becoming. He has given us freedom—and a few simple rules—commandments we call them—the keeping of which will take us back into his presence, with peace and the limitless opportunities of everlasting life. But we ought to begin to be what we want to be, in time or in eternity. There is no magic about it: if we want to be something, we must to be about our business, and not simply wish we were.