Cleansing

Being in Hawaii, living on the beach for the past week I have noticed that the beach gets full of footprints and holes and sand piles each day.  It shows that a lot of people have walked here.

Each night the tide comes in and cleansed the sand and washes away all the evidence of the day before.

It leaves a smooth, untarnished surface.  I find it incredible.  As we were walking the beach on Saturday I had a thought about the beach and how it is a type of Christ.

Each day we are given a clean slate to do with what we will.  We make decisions and some of those decisions muck up our beach and they leave marks on our smooth surface.  As we pray each evening and ask our Father in Heaven for forgiveness, he allows the atonement of His son to come in and cleanse our beach leaving the smooth sand once again.  

My goal is not to have need of my Savior's atonement, but rather to have less use of it for my dumb decisions.  I want to be kinder and less judgmental.  I want to have kind thoughts about those around me even when they do things to irritate me.  As I have consistently prayed for charity over the past nine months, I find it easier to let those thoughts go.  When I witness another driver do something foolish, instead of saying or thinking, "Idiot!" I find myself saying, "That wasn't the smartest thing to do." or "They must have something on their mind that they made such a poor decision."  I'm getting there.  My beach gets mucked up each day, but each ensuing day, my Father gives me a smooth surface to begin again.  It's further proof that my Father loves me infinitely.  He gives me more and more chances without number!