A new year

Happy New Year to one and all!

2005 has gone the way of all those other years I can remember from, say, about 1955 or 56, when I was six or seven. We talked to the grandson who lives with us (he's still four) about how tomorrow was a whole new year, and I think he had absolutely no idea what we were talking about.

Many years ago, as we were putting our numerous little children to bed on a New Year's Eve, we said to tender-hearted little Camilla, "Good-night, we'll see you next year," and she burst into tears, not realizing it was just until the next morning. And now she and her husband are expecting a new little one of their own. The cyle of life rolls on.

Sometime around 10:00 last night, our oldest granddaughter (who is nine) called to report that she and her family had just finished reading the Book of Mormon, as our prophet, President Gordon B. Hinckley, had asked us to do before the end of the year. That's cutting it close, but hey it was before the end of the year.

I was pondering last night, in the waning minutes of the old year, that on the previous New Year's Eve my brother Kay and his family had no idea it would be the last one they'd ever spend with their wife/mother/grandmother. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer in March and died in October.

That is a part of the genius of this mortal schooling the Lord has prepared for us: We never know when our turn is over. We never know when the final test is coming. We have to keep up on our homework. None of this last-minute cramming. Rather, there must be an ongoing vigilence, an attention to duty and relationships, a readiness for whenever the call comes to return home. We cannot procrastinate the day of our repentance.

Here is not our real home; we are simply away at boarding school. Yet sometimes we act as though we get to stay here pretty much indefinitely. Our attention and affections are on the things, the associations, the stuff of this world--and undoubtedly some of that may be appropriate as long as we keep it in proper perspective, remembering that our first loyalty has to be to the things of eternity, building relationships that can last into the next world, doing the things that our Heavenly Father wants us to be doing, things like exercising faith, repenting of our sins, entering into and keeping sacred covenants, strengthening our families, enduring to the end--in short, staying safely on the path, living the gospel, doing our homework, learning the lessons we were sent here to learn.

And keeping in touch with our heavenly home. We do that through prayer. (I had to throw that in because prayer was the topic of my first high council talk of the new year. I spoke earlier today in the 15th Ward sacrament meeting. It's always a great experience to meet with the wonderful Saints in that ward. I have many friends there.)