Gambling

Private pool  in California 

Gambling

     Do you gamble?  Most people do.  I remember being on a large cruise ship with my parents years ago.  There were lots of fun activities on board but in between activities they had a room full of slot machines.  I allowed myself just a few dollars that I turned into quarters to see if I could win big at the slot machine.  At one point I won twenty dollars and I could feel the excitement.                   I was telling my good fortune to my father and invited him to just come spend a few quarters but he wouldn’t budge. “ No!” he said,” I don’t gamble.”  I knew he had the money to waste or lose but he was very adamant about not gambling.  Years have passed and I don’t gamble either, not even one quarter and I have become quite adamant about it also.  But the gambling that I really abhor is not with money but with my life.

     Yes, gambling your life away.  Let me explain!  If you don’t take the Holy Ghost for your guide to lead you through this life and help you get to the Lord, then you are gambling.  And the stakes are big.  Before I understood the role of the Holy Ghost, I just went through life guessing or gambling the best I knew how with the limited knowledge I had to make the best decisions possible as they came up in life.  Some were small decisions and others were major.  I didn’t know I was gambling, I was just living life and doing the best I could on my own.  That was the problem, on my own.         Once I really understood the role of the Holy Ghost I realized there was no need in guessing, the job of the Holy Ghost is to be my guide, my best friend, to help me get through this life with as few bumps and bruises as possible.  Now I believe that there is really just one choice to make in this life….was I willing to take the companionship of the Holy Ghost seriously? Or would I choose to make multiple mistakes and gamble my life away, which will affect all of eternity.

     The most amazing book I ever read on the Holy Ghost is unfortunately out of print.  It was written by Bruce McConkie’s father or grandfather, I believe his name was Oscar.  The name of the book was “The Holy Ghost”.  It was lent to me by my cousin and I had to have a dictionary to look up words I had never seen or heard of before, several on every page.  But it was a profound book that had a lasting impact on my life.

     Some of the highlights I remember was the fact that the Holy Ghost has the same attributes as our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ…..He cannot or will not be in the presence of sin, so if we are where there is doubt, fear and worry, and of course sin, he will not be there to protect us and we are on our own.  The only way we get him back in our life is through repenting and asking for his presence again.  Just because he was given to us when we were confirmed doesn’t mean we can keep him with us unless we do our part.

     Years ago we lived in the old 6^th ward in Ogden.  We had only been there two weeks and they announced in Relief Society that a sister in the ward was home from the hospital with her new born baby.  Then they said she was very sick with the flu and her husband was just shipped out in the military and she had a 3 year old.  I felt compassion on the woman since having 7 children of my own, so I called her (explained I was new) and offered to take her 3 year old the next day to help her out.  She agreed and I walked over and picked her up the next morning.  My youngest child Elizabeth was in kindergarten and the only thing I had to do was visit one lady in the ward.   
     When it was time to visit I carefully placed the little 3 year old girl next to me in the front seat, before I started the car the spirit warned me to put her in the back seat , this was before seatbelts or car seats.  I was only going one and a half blocks but I promptly obeyed.  When I drove down the road (25 miles an hour) and came to the intersection, a car 10 seconds before me raced at least 75 miles an hour through the stop sign.  I was stunned, had I not taken those few extra seconds to put her in the back seat we would have been hit broadside and probably been killed.  What a testimony builder of the workings of the Holy Ghost.

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Mother Teresa