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TheDiscipleMD

The story is told of a man who had a friend named Bert. The man noticed that Bert suddenly began to park his car five miles away from his home at a local parking garage. Bert would then take a cab to and from the garage everyday causing a financial hardship on him and his family. When Bert was asked why he started to take a taxi the last five miles to and from his home, he replied “I heard on the news the other night that 52% of auto accidents occur within five miles of your home. So in order to increase my safety I won’t drive within five miles of my home anymore!”

While this story is more fiction than fact, one point of the story is true. More accidents do occur within five miles of one’s home. But it’s because most people “are driving” close to their homes. Bert had the right ideal in wanting to stay away from danger, he just didn’t accomplish his goal by making someone else become the driver. While Bert appears to be foolish in what he did, sometimes we find ourselves being just as foolish when it comes to understanding the “risk.” We live in spiritually dangerous times. We can’t afford to underestimate the perilous times we live in. By so doing we can fool ourselves into thinking we are secure when we are not. In conversations that I have had with members of the church, some it appears, believe that just “being a member” is some sort of “shield” against the adversary. On the contrary, being a member of the church makes us a “target” of the enemy and requires more diligence in protecting ourselves and our families from spiritual peril.

In the thirty fourth chapter of Alma, Amulek testifies that there is “safety” for those who believe in the Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice. He preached, speaking of Christ, that “he shall bring salvation to all those who shall believe on his name….and thus mercy can satisfy the demands of justice, and encircles them in the arms of safety, while he that exercises no faith unto repentance is exposed to the whole law of the demands of justice…” (Alma 34: 15-16).

There is safety in the words of the Lord’s anointed. Several years ago Jeffrey R. Holland gave a talk entitled “Safety for the Soul.” In it, after warning us of perilous time, he gave these thoughts:

‘In Lehi’s dream an already difficult journey gets more difficult when a mist of darkness arises, obscuring any view of the safe but narrow path his family and others are to follow. It is imperative to note that this mist of darkness descends on all the travelers—the faithful and the determined ones (the elect, we might even say) as well as the weaker and ungrounded ones. The principal point of the story is that the successful travelers resist all distractions, including the lure of forbidden paths and jeering taunts from the vain and proud who have taken those paths. The record says that the protected “did press their way forward, continually [and, I might add, tenaciously] holding fast” to a rod of iron that runs unfailingly along the course of the true path. However dark the night or the day, the rod marks the way of that solitary, redeeming trail…Love. Healing. Help. Hope. The power of Christ to counter all troubles in all times—including the end of times. That is the safe harbor God wants for us in personal or public days of despair. (Ensign, Nov 2009, 88–90).

As children we depended heavily on our parents to surround us with “arms of safety”. As adults it becomes our responsibility to build those “arms of safety” by living clean and virtuous lives. We must read in the scriptures, often, and communicate with our creator on a daily basis. We can not fool ourselves, like Bert, into thinking that we can “pass the risk” to someone else, be it our parents, teachers or church leaders. We must understand the dangers of life and then do all that we can to avoid them. Clearly, we are all at risk, spiritually, of being cut off from the Father. We need to follow the wise words of the prophets as found in the scriptures, as well as in the words spoken over the pulpit. When the winds are howling the risk is high and the potential fall of our homes is great!