Second Chances

We often feel conflicted whether someone deserves a second chance or not, including when that someone is us. We often treat second chances as ultimatums. I’ll give you one more try, but if you fail again, it’s all over. But that is not how the Lord operates. To get a sense for how abundant second chances actually are thanks to the Atonement of Jesus Christ, it helps to think of second not in terms of the one that comes after first, but rather as second, the basic unit by which we measure our time. When we think of Second Chances in this way, that means we are given a “Second” chance each second of each minute of the day. Leaving aside whether or not we deserve or ought to be given a second chance, our Loving Savior gives us not just one second chance but 86,400 second chances per day, every single day of our lives. He suffered an infinite amount in order to give us something like two to two and a half million second chances throughout our lives, given an average lifespan of 70-75 years. We like to overcomplicate this whole sinning and repenting and learning and trying and failing and enduring and succeeding, but at the end of the day, to sin means to miss the mark, and to repent means to take a fresh look at our target and aim again. When the children of Israel were smitten with fiery serpents, it took the work of a second, one second chance, to look at the brazen serpent and be healed. It really only takes one second for us to take fresh aim and try again. And if we veer off course again five seconds later, it just takes one more second for us to get back on track. Every second we choose to look to the Savior is a second we choose to live, and a second we choose to honor our Savior’s sacrifice and not waste that second chance we’ve been given.