"Hope" -- Elder Steven E. Snow

Obviously a certain message is being said, or I am only picking up one certain message, but the theme of General Conference definitely has been about desires, what matters most, and acting upon those things. Elder Snow says his version like this:

"Hope can inspire dreams and spur is to realize those dreams. Hope alone, however, does not cause us to succeed. Many honorable hopes have gone unfulfilled, shipwrecked on the reefs of good intentions and laziness."

I like how he uses the word "shipwrecked". It implies that this person has so much excitement for their future endeavor that they prepared and loaded up a ship and shoved off from shore. However, he said the ship's demise came by good intentions and laziness.

Good intentions are trouble. They work well for us because they allow us to do nothing and feel good about that.

"Oh sorry, I had every intention to clean the dishes, but then I remembered about a homework assignment and got totally caught up!"

Later, in our minds, this translates to:

"I would have done the dishes, but it was impossible for me to do them given the circumstance."

Which translates to:

"I did the dishes"

But did you? NO! The dishes are just as dirty as if you would have said:

"I had no intention to clean the dishes whatsoever. I was sitting around doing nothing all day."

This becomes uber dangerous when it comes to our hopes and even more fatal when it comes to the commandments. There is no room for excuses in judgement -- all that will be judged is the work that has been done, not the work we almost did.