In the movie, "Field of Dreams," one poignant scene captured a very human situation we have all experienced. The hero of the movie is sent on a quixotic search for a ballplayer who played years ago and who has the unenviable distinction of holding the worst record in the major leagues. He played in one game and had zero hits at bat.

When the hero finds him, the ballplayer is an old man. He's asked what it was like to play in that game and how it happened. The response was simple: He had just been called up from the minors, it was the last day of the season, the bottom of the eighth inning and his team was way ahead. The coach suddenly sent him in to play for what turned out to be just one inning. The game ended, the season was over and he was sent back to the minors.

"I didn't think much of it," he recalled. "We don't recognize the most significant moments of our lives when they're happening. They brush on past you. We think there will be other days. . . . I didn't realize that this would be the only day." Deeply disappointed, he left baseball.

Life is full of moments like that. We are often at crossroads. Some of the moments we recognize: We leave home, go off to school, move to another town, get another job. Those are the events we can control and even prepare for. But what of the moments that we don't recognize?

They are particularly painful when they involve personal relationships. We part company with someone we care for, and later realize we won't see him again. Life happens: One of them moves unexpectedly, or they fall ill, or they just drift away. And we never told them how much they meant to us, or how their life enriched ours.

And it isn't just with people that this happens. What of those jobs we promised to do, but haven't? What of the gift we meant to send, but didn't? Or the letter we haven't answered? Most of us have things waiting for us just as soon as we get time for them. We become very good at delaying things, often until they can't be done at all.

If we live life that way, we're destined to do a lot of wishing: wishing that we had taken advantage of the moment when it was there, wishing that we had finished the job that we started, wishing we had given up that bad habit earlier, wishing we had told our family and friends that we cared for them while there was still time to do it.

Brigham Young spoke to this idea. "Be not miserly in your feelings, but get knowledge and understanding by freely imparting it to others, and be not like a man who selfishly hoards his gold; for that man will not thus increase upon the amount, but will become contracted in his views and feelings."

Then, he said, "Wherever you see an opportunity to do good, do it, for that is the way to increase and grow in the knowledge of the truth." (Discourses of Brigham Young, p. 335.)

And the message is to do it now. Delay is the enemy of good intentions. In a slightly different context, and speaking of His second coming, Christ told His disciples that "if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.

"Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." (Matt 24:43-44.)

More recently, the Lord told Joseph Smith, "If you believe me, ye will labor while it is called today." (D&C 64:25.)

A beloved hymn of the Latter-day Saints is "Today While the Sun Shines." (Number 229.) It expresses perfectly the idea that now is the time to do good: " . . . Work with a will, Today all your duties with patience fulfill . . . Work while you may; Prepare for tomorrow by working today."

In the movie, which is a fantasy after all, the old ballplayer gets another chance to play, and wouldn't we all like to have that gift?

But that's not what happens in real life. As Conrad Aiken once wrote, "One ought to see everything that one has a chance of seeing; because in life not many have one chance and none has two." (Sard Harker, 1924.)

Today, would be a good time to fulfill all those good intentions you've been hoarding.