78 Days: Building on Quicksand

A seminary teacher once told me, "Testimony has a very short shelf life." He was explaining to the class how - unlike mayonnaise, which is going to taste the same no matter what century it is when you eat it - there are certain foods that have a "short shelf life," which is a way of saying that they expire quickly if just left on the counter. He said that our testimonies were like that, too. If we just put them away on the shelf and never take them out, they'll expire quickly. It takes constant attention to keep a testimony strong.

This was a nice sentiment for me to hear, but I already had my own analogy, which had been sitting on the back burner in my head since about seventh grade. Even at that age of incredibly shortness and excessive glasses-wearing, I had noticed that when I had a great spiritual experience, my testimony was really firm for only a few days or hours before I started to forget the things I had learned. If I ever let myself think that I was done working on my testimony, it fell into a swift decay.

And so I began to think of my testimony as a wall of colored wooden blocks.



No, really. I thought, building a testimony is kind of like trying to build a tower out of blocks. But you're not building the tower on the floor, you're building it on quicksand. So if you build a really tall tower, but then walk away from it and leave it alone, it's going to sink and sink until the whole thing has disappeared. You have to stay right next to it, and keep putting blocks on top so that your tower is always ready when you need it.

Wouldn't it be terrible to run back to your tower in an hour of great need, only to find that it's fallen over in your absence?

I was reminded of this principle today in my regional conference meeting. Many of the speakers talked about enduring to the end, about building our faith through works, about not giving up halfway through anything. And I was really glad to have been there and heard those words, particularly when I've been feeling like school was steamrolling me.

So I'm going to recommit to my little tower of blocks. It doesn't take a lot; just one little block every day. But I want to make sure my tower is tall and steady when I need it.

Because it may just look like a little tower of blocks, but it has the power to overcome hellfire.