Heavy artillery is often loaded with a certain number of incendiary “tracer” rounds that leave a blazing trail of light across the sky as they are fired. This can be particularly useful when firing in the dark to ensure that the artillery is still hitting the target. The original term for sin meant to miss the target. Every choice we make is like a round fired, and unfortunately we are going to miss the target on a lot of our choices. Sometimes life is moving so fast that it feels like we aren’t trying to aim and hit the target with a pistol or a rifle but with a rapid-fire machine gun. Especially when we are going through dark times, it can feel impossible to know where the target is or if we are hitting it. But if we add tracer rounds to our ammunition, then we can have a better chance of hitting the target. Tracer rounds might be things like prayer, fasting, keeping the commandments, honoring and renewing our covenants, repenting, attending the church and the temple, acts of service. Each one of these choices, when fired, leaves a trail of light that can help us to determine if we are on target or missing the mark. We can’t always make every round a tracer round - life is far too messy and chaotic and confusing to always be making the right choices one hundred percent of the time. But the more of these choices we make that bring light into our lives, the better we will be at making sure we are hitting the target. I know that however good our aim is, we can all use more tracer rounds to make sure that we are staying on track, especially when everything is dark around us and we’re firing too fast to keep track.
