The Whole Duty

¹“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.” Our whole duty is remarkably simple - fear or reverence or respect God and keep His commandments. That's it. That's the whole thing. Doesn't that give us a great sense of relief? We don't have to have everything figured out. We can obey God's commandments even if we don't always understand what purpose they serve or how they are going to benefit us or anyone else. When we make mistakes, especially when those mistakes hurt other people, we can repent and redouble our efforts to keep the commandments but if we have done all we can to make amends, anything else is outside of our duty. They may not forgive us. There may be wounds that we are powerless to help heal. Jesus will take care of fixing everything that we can't. If we have done all we can do, then anything else is beyond the scope of our duties. And the flip side of the coin is the exact same. If the mistakes of others have broken us in ways that they are powerless to fix, it is not our duty to fix everything all on our own. Our duty is to forgive them and trust in our Savior that He will figure out how to make everything better for us. If we ever find that we are beating ourselves up, we should ask ourselves if the things that are causing us such grief are a part of either loving and fearing God or keeping His commandments. If they're not either of those things, then we just have to turn all of that over to Jesus and let Him sort it out. I know that as we strive every day to fulfill our whole duty, Christ will take care of everything else.