As I looked out over my garden today, I felt sad for these tomatoes. They were still green a few weeks ago on the day before our first hard freeze. That afternoon, before the storm blew in, I harvested any tomato with even the slightest blush of red. I filled our counter tops with cookie sheets full of tomatoes ripe and ripening. They have now been eaten or shared with others.
The hundreds of tomatoes left hanging on the vines in the cold were still hard and green. As you can see, some of them were protected enough to ripen after the freeze. But we were out of town. They were too late for me to pick.
As I looked at these tomatoes today, a scripture came to mind. “Do not procrastinate the day of your repentance.” Now, I know that tomatoes have little choice in the matter, but I do. Don’t wait until it’s too late. Act now. Be good now. Help now. We don’t know when the storm might blow in. We don’t know when it will be everlastingly too late.
The prophet Alma and his companion, Amulek preached among a wicked people called the Zoramites. Amulek told them:
For behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.
And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.
Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.
For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked.
(Alma 34:32-35)
These spaghetti squash also missed out, but they were my fault. Not enough time to eat them, not enough time to harvest them.
