Learn From Your Past--And Look to Your Future

Last Sunday at church we had our branch president speak to us. He delivered a very powerful message using a talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, "Remembr Lot's Wife." It was a great talk with such a profound message in it that I had to find it, print it out, and read it. And I am glad I did because I learned a lot from the talk that I would like to share. A short and simple verse in Luke 17:32 says, "Remember Lot's wife." We know of the account of Lot and his family that they were commanded by the Lord to leave the city of Sodom and Gomorrah because it was going to be destroyed. The Lord warned them to not look back, but sadly Lot's wife did and she turned into a pillar of salt. A great lesson was learned from this talk as it was delivered to the whole congregation by the branch president. Sometimes in our lives we look back with resentment longing for the things of our past, just like Lot's wife. And when we do that, "our attachment to the past outweighs our confidence in the future." Elder Holland continues to give us a great counsel, "I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind." As we look towards the future having faith and putting our trust in Christ "greater things awaits us."(D&C 45:62)

Life is not about dwelling on our past, but learning from it. We all make mistakes, we all sin, we all have regrets; but "such dwelling on past lives, including past mistakes, is just not right! It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ." Christ has fulfilled a great mission for each and everyone of us by sacrificing His life so we could all live a good happy life. In closing, Elder Holland shared an experience he had with his wife that helped them to continue with their faith on the future and putting their trust in the Lord. He says;

Sister Holland and I were married about the time both of us were reading poems like that in BYU classrooms. We were as starstruck—and as fearful—as most of you are at these ages and stages of life. We had absolutely no money. Zero. For a variety of reasons, neither of our families was able to help finance our education. We had a small apartment just south of campus—the smallest we could find: two rooms and a half bath. We were both working too many hours trying to stay afloat financially, but we had no other choice.
I remember one fall day—I think it was in the first semester after our marriage in 1963—we were walking together up the hill past the Maeser Building on the sidewalk that led between the President’s Home and the Brimhall Building. Somewhere on that path we stopped and wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. Life that day seemed so overwhelming, and the undergraduate plus graduate years that we still anticipated before us seemed monumental, nearly insurmountable. Our love for each other and our commitment to the gospel were strong, but most of all the other temporal things around us seemed particularly ominous.
On a spot that I could probably still mark for you today, I turned to Pat and said something like this: “Honey, should we give up? I can get a good job and carve out a good living for us. I can do some things. I’ll be okay without a degree. Should we stop trying to tackle what right now seems so difficult to face?”
In my best reenactment of Lot’s wife, I said, in effect, “Let’s go back. Let’s go home. The future holds nothing for us.”
Then my beloved little bride did what she has done for 45 years since then. She grabbed me by the lapels and said, “We are not going back. We are not going home. The future holds everything for us.”
She stood there in the sunlight that day and gave me a real talk. I don’t recall that she quoted Paul, but there was certainly plenty in her voice that said she was committed to setting aside all that was past in order to “press toward the mark” and seize the prize of God that lay yet ahead. It was a living demonstration of faith. It was “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). So we laughed, kept walking, and finished up sharing a root beer—one glass, two straws—at the then newly constructed Wilkinson Center."

We can all relate to Elder Holland's talk about Lot's wife. A great analogy was given right after the branch president's talk. The stake president talked about the windshield and the rear view mirror and how we can relate it to our lives. As we are driving, we look through our windshield but never spend more than a second looking at our rear view or side mirrors. If we were to our chances of arriving at our destination would be greatly decreased if not entirely eliminated. The same thing applies to our spiritual journey to return to our Heavenly Father.