I was going to the prom! I thought about it for days, and then decided to go. After all, I would be a senior but once. So why not?

I well knew that informing my parents would be most difficult. I was a minister's son who had been taught all my life the problems and dangers involved in the modern dance. I decided to tell them at breakfast.

"Dad," I said, "since I am a senior, I have decided to go to the Senior Prom." I waited for his reply, but there was only silence. I expected my father to take me to task severely. I thought certainly that mother would cry. But still there was silence, a terrifying silence. Then my father replied, "So you are going to the prom?"

"Yes sir," I said, "after all I'll be a senior only once." He looked at me and then hung his head. Then he said words I'll never forget: "Son, your mother and I have tried to teach you for the past sixteen years what is right and what's wrong. We've done our best to bring you up as a Christian young man. But you're right Son, you are a senior. You are almost grown. So if you have decided to attend the Senior Prom, go ahead, but please remember this: if the Lord should come and find you there, please tell Him that you came because You wanted to, not because We sent you."

Those sobering words shook me into reality. I then knew that this was a temptation that I must overcome. I must not go! I have never regretted not going, but continue to thank God that I was given the strength to throw my influence, fully behind the church and its work in the community. Remembering this temptation, I take encouragement from James 1:12, "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him."

Truth Magazine XXIII: 22, p. 359
May 31, 1979