The young deer bounded through the orchard toward the house where I was watching through the window.  All four hooves hit the ground simultaneously and launched her three feet into the air for the next bound.  It wasn’t an efficient way to run, and made her look quite ridiculous.

Consternation showed in her every motion.  Her three companions had slipped out the open gate and had gone back to the safety of the woods long ago, leaving her to find her own way.  She had come in through that very gate with her friends, and together they’d eaten the apples that the fence had been erected to protect.  The gate was closed every night to keep out her, her male friend that rubbed his antlers on the young trees that were thus broken and girdled, and her elk cousins that pulled up and ate the new raspberry plants.

She knew she wasn’t supposed to be where she was, and she definitely didn’t want to be there alone.  But where was the way out?  She ran up and down the fence, looking for a hole.  There was none.  She tried jumping the fence.  It was too high.  She tried to force her way under.  It couldn’t be done.  She came to the corner where she spun around and around and around.  There was none other way, save it be by the gate.  (2 Nephi 9:41).  Where to go, and what to do, she hadn’t a clue.  What she did know was that the man with the big German shepherd dog would be arriving soon.  The dog was death on deer that found themselves trapped as she was.

To help her find her way, I stepped out the back door where she would see me and run down the other fence-line and find the gate.  As hoped, she ran down the fence—and right by the wide-open gate.  She couldn’t see it!

How like that deer are people.  They can be trapped by their sins, be desperate to find their way out, try every antidote, but yet refuse to see the gate when it’s shown to them.

Moral:

You can show them the gate, but you can’t make them use it.