Concerning Consequences – Sunday, June 02, 1946
It is about that time again when another school year is left behind, and countless students face the record of their own past efforts, to be graded, and graduated or failed, accordingly. Sometimes, when our performance has not been our best, we may hopefully suppose that the record could be forever closed. But there come times when we want to go to higher activities, when we need credentials to qualify for further opportunities, when we need a transcript of credits—and then the books are opened: there stands the record, and we are faced with the consequences of our own doing, for better or for worse.
If such consequences were always obvious and immediate, most of us would take our daily performance more seriously. But some of the premiums and penalties for what we do or don’t do are not always immediately apparent. Justice and judgment are often seemingly delayed, are sometimes slow and subtle, and the false assumption that anyone is cheating and getting away with it is actually merely a process of piling up accounts to be paid with certainty at some future time. It doesn’t matter whether it is cash or credit, if the sale has been made, the charge is there. Sometimes we ignore the factors of health, and because we feel no immediate permanent effect from some indulgence or some bad habit, we may think we have gotten away with it.” We may think, because we are not spanked at the moment of our misdeeds, that the spanking has been forgotten. But it hasn’t.
Nature and God and conscience and the record of our lives are inexorable in remembrance, and deliver the consequences in their own time and in their own way, for “there is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven . . .upon which all blessings are predicated—and when we obtain any blessing … it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.”1 This is no mere threat—and it is certainly no more a threat than it is a promise. It is merely the statement of an unfailing truth which we and our children would do well to learn for our happiness and salvation—and the sooner we learn it the greater are our chances for both, for every act of our lives has its consequences, desirable or otherwise.
1Doctrine & Covenants 130:20 and 21.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, June 2, 1946, 11:80 a.m. to 12:00 noon, EDST. Copyright 1946.
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June 02, 1946
Broadcast Number 0,876