The Bike

Yesterday morning my kids were standing outside with some friends waiting for the bus to arrive. One of the boys, Levi (a first grader), looked down at our lawn and said, "Hey that's my bike! Why is it here?" (He left it at our house the other day, and only lives a few houses down the street.) He shrugged it off and they got on the bus. The bike remained there.

Then this morning the same kids were outside waiting for the bus. Levi (the owner of the bike), looked down again and said, "Hey! Why is my bike still here?"

I asked him, "Did you ever take it back home?"

He responded, "No."

I would have responded with, "Then why would you expect it to have returned to your home when you failed to do anything about it?" But I didn't. He's only 6 after all. 

But it got me thinking. How often do we have dreams, aspirations, or goals that we want, but fail to do anything about? Do we have a goal to get into shape, but fail to eat healthy and exercise? Do we want to have a spiritually strong family, but fail to live the gospel ourselves or teach our children from the Come Follow Me manual? Do we wish for our relationships to improve, but we remain in our comfort zones playing absent-mindedly on our smartphones, ignoring the very faces we love the most sitting right in front of us? 

How often do we want something and expect a result, when we ourselves are unwilling to put in the work? We cannot assume, like Levi, that someone else is going to do it for us. 

As I pondered and reflected on this experience, I thought about how we cannot expect to make it to our Heavenly Father in the Celestial Kingdom without doing the work for it. We must keep the commandments, have charity and faith, stay on the covenant path, attend church, study on our own, attend the temple, minister, teach our family, etc. It's not complicated. It's in fact, very simple. But it takes constant, consistent daily effort.