Repent!

On Sunday, we had a wonderful lesson from the Joseph Smith manual on repentance. Lauren led a great, thought-provoking discussion, which may be what Elder Holland was talking about when he said, "It's better to take just a few good ideas and get good discussion—and good learning—than to be frenzied, trying to teach every word in the manual.”

Our discussion focused on daily repentance. Lauren asked what we thought the phrase in the manual meant that reads, "Repentance is a thing that cannot be trifled with every day." Questions were also raised like, "Do I need to kneel down every night and really repent of something that I did that day?" "What if I'm repenting daily and have the desire to change, but I keep on making the same mistakes?"

The realization that I came to during this discussion was that repentance is a change of heart and mind; a change of the way one views God. This made me stop thinking of repentance as a one-time event when I kneel down at night and repent of a mistake I made during the day, resolving to stop doing it the next day. It made me realize that maybe every day I can have a little softening of my heart, a little more humility or a slight change of my mind in the direction of God's will, and that that "counts" as my repentance for the day! I had never thought of it that way before! Brigham Young said, "Most of the time, repentance does not involve dramatic changes. Rather, it involves small, often daily changes that move us in the direction of godliness."

I am grateful for the enlightening discussion we had on Sunday. Did anyone else have a realization during the lesson? Any comments that were missed? Feel free to comment.