I wish I still had it so I could include a photo, but I finally sent it to Goodwill. It was a cheaply made stuffed green alligator that crinkled when you touched it because of the inferior stuffing. Nothing soft, nothing cuddly, nothing cute.Just a cheap stuffed alligator and a very hard lesson.
When my children were young, we went at least once every summer to King’s Dominion, a mini-Disney World outside of Richmond, Virginia. The trips were anxiously anticipated and talked about for weeks before and weeks after.
The price of the tickets included all the rides and shows, but not the pavilion where the video games lurked. The children were given money for food as they took off in all directions with their friends, but never money for the video games.
One of my sons, who was about 10 at the time, was always intrigued by people carrying around the huge stuffed animals they had won at shooting baskets or throwing rings over bottles. However much we tried to convince him that such tempting attractions were a total waste of money, he wasn’t convinced.
One summer he headed toward the pavilion and said he was going to win a stuffed animal. Since I hadn’t given him any money, I was sure he wouldn’t be in there long and would soon be back in line at the roller coasters and water rides. But he was in there a long time, and I finally went looking for him.
He came hurrying out of the pavilion and there in his arms was, you guessed, a cheap, crinkly stuffed green alligator.
“I won, I won!” he said.
“Great!” I responded, sort of glad that he had won something and maybe this annoying quest was over.
“How much money did it take?” I asked with a cringe.
“Just $30,” he said. “All my money.”
Well, the damage was done, so as I remember I said “Thirty dollars?” rather weakly and tucked this back in my memory for a future talk (and column!) on spending money on things that are of no worth. The story has served me well.
I kept that alligator for a lot of years, up on a shelf in first one bedroom and then another. I just couldn’t stand to throw it away because it was such a good reminder not to waste your money, your time, your effort, your goals and everything else with which the Lord has blessed you on something that is of no eternal worth.
Recently I thought about it again as I taught a Gospel Doctrine class about 2 Nephi 9:51 and read “Wherefore, do not spend money for that which is of no worth, nor your labor for that which cannot satisfy.”
But spending our money is not all that is available to waste.
I knew someone close to me who sold his soul for the evil of pornography. At first he just rented out pieces of it at a time, striving to keep one part of his life separate from the other. At nights he passed his time in the darkness watching filth spew forth from his TV. On weekends and Sundays he was a family man and leader in the Church.
His conscience and soul were already sold to the most evil, manipulating salesperson of all eternity-he who can never have a body so he entices others to defile theirs-when it became nothing more than a tiny step that was required to step over to the sin of adultery.
But God refused to be mocked. When the two lives of this once-returned missionary collided and he was found out, he had sold his soul so thoroughly and had a conscience so dulled that the price of redemption and forgiveness that the Savior offered seemed too high a price to pay.
He was left with the free agency he had squandered, but nothing to show for it. His temple marriage, his home, his church membership, and the respect of his children had been traded for vile images and wasted passions.
And so he has spent so many years, standing outside the temple as his children married, outside the circle as the grandchildren are blessed and confirmed, outside the blessings that come from a temple marriage, outside the Church as the kingdom of God spreads throughout the world, and outside the light of the gospel and testimony that once gave him warmth and life.
The Savior stands by, having already bought back his sin and his pain. But the cost to his pride and stubbornness is too great. He is the prodigal son with the wasted inheritance but without the humility and broken heart to come home again.
We must ever be careful on what we spend our inheritance. We must make sure that what we are left with at the end of the day and eventually the end of our mortal lives is that of infinite worth and certainly not a cheap stuffed alligator tossed on the pile at Goodwill, just another meaningless bauble of little worth for which we traded our souls.
Susan Elzey is a freelance writer and would love for you to buy her novel “Miracle of the Christmas Star,” which isn’t really a Christmas story at all, regardless of what the marketing people who changed her title said. It’s a story of a mother’s love, faith, and enduring courage for all times of the year and can ordered from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and at www.cedarfort.com. Check out Susan’s website at www.susanelzey.com
