Rebooting Our Souls

When we haven't restarted our computers in a while, they can start to get sluggish and buggy. Programs won't open, or they'll take too long to load, or they'll be missing functions. Caches get clogged with old bits of data, RAM holds onto subroutines for applications that we haven't used in days or weeks. But when we take the time to restart our computer, it has the chance to purge all of that dead weight and clean up its memory and run much more smoothly again. We have the same opportunity to give our souls a reboot when we repent and partake of the Sacrament. Throughout the week our souls get clogged up with the memories of hurts we've received and hurts we've inflicted on others. Instead of running smoothly and peacefully, our minds get stuck on the memories of our mistakes. Carrying around all of this guilt and pain and resentment causes us to miss important things, takes us longer to hear and recognize the promptings of the Spirit, makes it harder for us to live up to our covenants. But when we partake of the Sacrament, it is like rebooting our souls. We can clear out the cache of memories of our guilt and shame. We can start out the week with a fresh spiritual CPU and RAM, ready and eager to put into practice gospel principles and to love and serve one another without delay. It is a good practice to frequently reboot our computers and it is even more important that we do not wait to repent and reboot our souls as often as we can.