In a courtroom in northwest England three young men, only 14 and 15 years of age, stood nervously in the dock to face the judge. Parents and relatives waited anxiously in the public gallery behind them. Their crime? In a moment of madness they had chosen to rob a local store with an imitation gun. Although the store was closed and their plan failed, a grave offense had been committed. Lawyers pleaded that they had been foolish, led astray by delinquent associates.

As the sentence of three years detention in an institution for young offenders was pronounced by the judge, shocked cries emanated from the distressed families. Shoulders shook as the young men sobbed. Amidst the loud protests, a mother screamed at the judge, "They're only children!"

Even for the lawyers involved, to contemplate the consequences and effect of the choices of these young men was a sobering moment. The young men had shamed their families and robbed themselves not only of their good character but also the best part of their teenage years. What altered lives they would now lead and what limitations they had placed on their futures one could only guess.

That evening in the same city other young people gathered for a church activity, ignorant of the courtroom tragedy. In stark contrast to the misery in the homes of those three young men that night, with vacant seats at the dinner table and empty bedrooms in the house, wholesome activity and spiritual uplift would be enjoyed by different 14- and 15-year-old young men. In the lives of these youth would also come choices with far-reaching consequences, if not that day then another.

More than 180 years earlier, another 14-year-old young man made a choice of momentous consequence not only for his own life but also for those of millions of others. The young Joseph Smith, struggling to reconcile the claims of competing religions, desperately wanted to know how to act. He read, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him" (James 1:5).

Joseph wrote, "Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine." He, "at length came to the determination to "ask of God." (See Joseph Smith — History 1: 12, 13.)

We will ever be grateful for the consequences of his humble plea in the Sacred Grove in the Spring of 1820 and the choice he made to live up to what he learned there.

President Spencer W. Kimball wrote, "A dozen times a day we come to a fork in the road and must decide which way we will go. Some alternatives are long and hard, but they take us in the right direction toward our ultimate goal; others are short, wide, and pleasant, but they go off in the wrong decision." (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 164.)

Were the young men in court inherently wicked and their counterparts at church bound always to choose the right? No, choices come to each of us in life and our responses will shape the course of our lives. Each must choose how to act, whether it's something as stupid as deciding to rob a store, or as simple as whether to take a drink or try a cigarette.

No doubt, in the coming years, those three young men in court that day will often look back with regret to the reckless moment they made the wrong choice. They learned the hard way that the time to make wise choices is early.

"In the beginning," wrote President Kimball, "each of us is a bundle of potential that can be developed and shaped by what we choose to do. In youth there is still great malleability. We can choose what we will become. As the years go by, we find our past choices have narrowed the alternatives still open to us and we have less and less control over our future." (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p. 165.)