In JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the character Ron Weasley abandons his two best friends in the middle of their quest and then later he is able to find them with a gift given him by Dumbledore. Still feeling the sting of shame for leaving them, Ron guesses that Dumbledore must have given him the gift because “‘he must’ve known I'd run out on you.’ ‘No,’ Harry corrected him. ‘He must’ve known you'd always want to come back.’” Our Heavenly Father did not give us the light of Christ and a conscience because He knew we would turn from Him and run out on Him. He gave us a conscience because He knows that we would always want to return and come back to Him. We humans are natural turners. We are constantly pivoting to the next new thing. In a world of infinite variety, our ability to shift gears and try something new is one of our greatest strengths. They say that the only thing that is constant is change. So how do we reconcile our constant change with our Heavenly Father's unchanging constancy? It's all about the Re-Turn. When we notice we have turned away from our Heavenly Father, we simply need to do what we do best and turn away from our turning, and re-turn back to our Heavenly Father. We may have to do this hundreds of times per day, maybe even hundreds of times per hour. That is OK. Remember, God did not give us the light of Christ because He knew we were weak and cowardly failures who can't concentrate long enough to think Celestial and that we would always turn away from Him. God gave us the light of Christ because He knew that when we had turned away and wandered off into the mists of darkness and gotten lost and alone and scared, we would always want to return and come back to Him, and the light of Christ would show us the way. We need to stop being shocked or panicked or depressed when, despite all of the will in the world and the strongest of righteous desires in our heart, we nevertheless turn away from God. No, we shouldn't do it, and yes, the consequences of turning away from the source of all that is good in this world can be painful and upsetting. But every time we leave, our Father is standing and watching for us and the moment we Re-Turn, even when we are yet a long way off, our Father runs to embrace us and rejoices that even with all of the distractions and our poor attention spans and our forgetful hearts, we have nevertheless chosen to leave all of that behind and be with Him, even if just for a little while. God is not worried when we turn from Him because He knows we will always try to come back.
