Notes

Since I know something of the anxiety the pressure of time creates in your life, I would like to share what I have learned about how to handle that feeling of hurry. It’s important to be sure we agree on the nature of the problem. Time passes at a fixed rate and we can’t store it. You can just decide what to do with it—or not to do with it. Even a moment’s reflection will help you see that the problem of using your time well is not a problem of the mind but of the heart. It will only yield to a change in the very way we feel about time. The value of time must change for us. And then the way we think about it will change, naturally and wisely.

That change in feeling and in thinking is combined in the words of a prophet of God in this dispensation. It was Brigham Young, and the year was 1877. “The property which we inherit from our Heavenly Father is our time, and the power to choose in the disposition of the same. This is the real capital that is bequeathed unto us by our Heavenly Father; all the rest is what he may be pleased to add unto us” (Journal of Discourses, 18:354).

When you choose to see or hear filth portrayed, for instance, you may at first feel you have just spent some time. But if you persist, you will find that beyond time wasted you have allowed Satan to draw you toward sin and then into it. And then you will have incurred debts that will burden and diminish every minute of existence that follows, unless and until you find the healing balm of the Atonement of Jesus Christ through repentance, which takes pain, and time. Oh, what Brigham Young would want for you, and what I pray you may have, is a heart that wants to invest your inheritance, time…

You will develop your ability to invest your precious time well by gaining three confidences. First, you must gain confidence that God keeps his promises. Second, you must gain God’s confidence that you will always keep the promises, not that you choose to make, but that he asks you to make. And third, you must help others gain confidence that God keeps his promises…

Now, I haven’t solved the problem of your busy schedules. You will still feel that you are in a hurry and you will still find yourself not reaching the end of every list. In fact, you may find your list changing and even growing larger. But you can have peace and confidence in your choices. I pray that you will feel that peace and that you will feel gratitude for having been blessed with the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, with living prophets, and with the sure promise of the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I pray that you will have confidence in God’s promises, gain his confidence, and offer to others the promises you have, as a child of promise.