DUTY

We live in a day when counting on someone to do their duty is a flip of the coin.  We cannot count on them as we used to.

  A person's word used to be the same as their "word of honor".....

You may have heard the well known account of Karl G Maeser, first president of Brigham Young University (Brigham Young Academy initially)...when he was asked to define "word of honor"....he said "I have been asked what I mean by 'word of honor.'  I will tell you.  Place me behind prison walls--walls of stone ever so high, ever so thick, reaching so far into the ground---there is a possibility that in some way or another I might be able to escape; but stand me on the floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it.  Can I get out of that circle?  NO, NEVER! I'd die first."
 

President Gordon B Hinckley, former president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a talk on TRUST and ACCOUNTABILITY.... I think of Lord Nelson on the morning of the Battle of Trafalgar when he said: "England expects every man will do his duty."  After that fierce and bloody contest, as he stood on the deck of his ship to extend humanity to his enemy, a ball was fired within fifteen yards of where he stood.

He fell to the deck, his spine shattered.  He expired three and a quarter hours later, his last articulated words being, "Thank God, I have done my duty." (21 October 1805, from Robert Southey, Life of Nelson, ch. 9)

A tall shaft and statue stand in his honor in Trafalgar Square in London. 

Maybe we can re-create, by our own decisions and choices, a day and time when our word of honor again means something that is crystal clear and absolute in its meaning and intent.

Have a nice day. Jim