The Best Is Yet to Be
By Elder Jeffrey R.
Holland Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Best Is Yet to Be,” Liahona,
Jan 2010, 16–21
From a Brigham Young University devotional address given on
January 13, 2009. For the full text of the address in English, visit http://speeches.byu.edu.
Look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future.
As a scriptural theme for this discussion, I have chosen Luke
17:32, where the Savior cautions, “Remember Lot’s wife.” What did He mean
by such an enigmatic little phrase? To find out, we need to do as He
suggested. Let’s recall who Lot’s wife was.
The story, of course, comes to us out of the days of Sodom and Gomorrah,
when the Lord, having had as much as He could stand of the worst that men and
women could do, told Lot and his family to flee because those cities were
about to be destroyed. “Escape for thy life,” the Lord said. “Look not
behind thee … ; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed” (Genesis
19:17; emphasis added).
With less than immediate obedience and more than a little negotiation, Lot
and his family ultimately did leave town but just in the nick of time. The
scriptures tell us what happened at daybreak the morning following their
escape:
“The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the
Lord out of heaven;
“And he overthrew those cities” (Genesis
19:24–25).
My theme comes in the next verse. Surely, with the Lord’s counsel—“look
not behind thee”—ringing clearly in her ears, Lot’s wife, the record says,
“looked back,” and she was turned into a pillar of salt (see verse 26).
Just what did Lot’s wife do that was so wrong? As a student of history, I
have thought about that and offer a partial answer. Apparently, what was
wrong with Lot’s wife was that she wasn’t just looking back; in her
heart she wanted to go back. It would appear that even before she
was past the city limits, she was already missing what Sodom and Gomorrah had
offered her. As Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004) of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles once said, such people know they should have their primary residence
in Zion, but they still hope to keep a summer cottage in Babylon.1
It is possible that Lot’s wife looked back with resentment toward the Lord
for what He was asking her to leave behind. We certainly know that Laman and
Lemuel were resentful when Lehi and his family were commanded to leave
Jerusalem. So it isn’t just that she looked back; she looked back longingly.
In short, her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future.
That, apparently, was at least part of her sin.
Faith Points to
the Future
As a new year begins and we try to benefit from a proper view
of what has gone before, 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 and 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 that nothing that lay ahead
could possibly be as good as what she was leaving behind.
To yearn to go back to a world that cannot be lived in now, to be
perennially dissatisfied with present circumstances and have only dismal
views of the future, and to miss the here and now and tomorrow because we are
so trapped in the there and then and yesterday are some of the sins of Lot’s
wife.
After the Apostle Paul reviewed the privileged and rewarding life of his
early years—his birthright, education, and standing in the Jewish
community—he says to the Philippians that all of that was “dung” compared to
his conversion to Christianity. He says, and I paraphrase, “I have stopped
rhapsodizing about ‘the good old days’ and now eagerly look toward the future
‘that I may apprehend that for which Christ apprehended me’” (see Philippians
3:7–12). Then come these verses:
“This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those things which are before,
“I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in
Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14).
No Lot’s wife here. No looking back at Sodom and Gomorrah here. Paul knows
it is out there in the future, up ahead wherever heaven is taking us, that we
will win “the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
Forgive and
Forget
There is something in many of us that particularly fails to
forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life—either our mistakes or the
mistakes of others. It is not good. It is not Christian. It stands in
terrible opposition to the grandeur and majesty of the Atonement of Christ.
To be tied to earlier mistakes is the worst kind of wallowing in the past
from which we are called to cease and desist.
I was told once of a young man who for many years was more or less the
brunt of every joke in his school. He had some disadvantages, and it was easy
for his peers to tease him. Later in his life he moved away. He eventually
joined the army and had some successful experiences there in getting an
education and generally stepping away from his past. Above all, as many in
the military do, he discovered the beauty and majesty of the Church and
became active and happy in it.
Then, after several years, he returned to the town of his youth. Most of
his generation had moved on but not all. Apparently, when he returned quite
successful and quite reborn, the same old mind-set that had existed before
was still there, waiting for his return. To the people in his hometown, he
was still just old “so-and-so”—you remember the guy who had the problem, the
idiosyncrasy, the quirky nature, and did such and such. And wasn’t it all
just hilarious?
Little by little this man’s Pauline effort to leave that which was behind
and grasp the prize that God had laid before him was gradually diminished
until he died about the way he had lived in his youth. He came full circle:
again inactive and unhappy and the brunt of a new generation of jokes. Yet he
had had that one bright, beautiful midlife moment when he had been able to
rise above his past and truly see who he was and what he could become. Too
bad, too sad that he was again to be surrounded by a whole batch of Lot’s
wives, those who thought his past was more interesting than his future. They
managed to rip out of his grasp that for which Christ had grasped him. And he
died sad, though through little fault of his own.
That also happens in marriages and other relationships. I can’t tell you
the number of couples I have counseled who, when they are deeply hurt or even
just deeply stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a
bigger brick to throw through the window “pain” of their marriage. When
something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it
can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other
wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to
go back and open some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died to heal.
Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and
improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is that charity? Yes!
Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in
the past, leave it buried. Don’t keep going back with your little sand pail
and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone,
saying, “Hey! Do you remember this?” Splat!
Well, guess what? That is probably going to result in some ugly morsel
being dug up out of your landfill with the reply, “Yeah, I remember
it. Do you remember this?” Splat.
And soon enough everyone comes out of that exchange dirty and muddy and
unhappy and hurt, when what our Father in Heaven pleads for is cleanliness
and kindness and happiness and healing.
Such dwelling on past lives, including past mistakes, is just not right!
It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. In some ways it is worse than Lot’s
wife because at least she destroyed only herself. In cases of marriage and
family, wards and branches, apartments and neighborhoods, we can end up
destroying so many others.
Perhaps at this beginning of a new year there is no greater requirement
for us than to do as the Lord Himself said He does: “He who has repented of
his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (D&C
58:42).
The proviso, of course, is that repentance has to be sincere, but when it
is and when honest effort is being made to progress, we are guilty of the
greater sin if we keep remembering and recalling and rebashing someone with
his or her earlier mistakes—and that someone might be ourselves. We
can be so hard on ourselves—often much more so than on others!
Now, like the Anti-Nephi-Lehies of the Book of Mormon, bury your weapons
of war and leave them buried (see Alma 24). Forgive and do that which is sometimes
harder than to forgive: forget. And when it comes to mind again, forget it
again.
The Best Is Yet
to Be
You can remember just enough to avoid repeating the
mistake, but then put the rest of it all on the dung heap Paul spoke of to
the Philippians. Dismiss the destructive, and keep dismissing it until the
beauty of the Atonement of Christ has revealed to you your bright future and
the bright future of your family, your friends, and your neighbors. God
doesn’t care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where
you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go. That is the thing
Lot’s wife didn’t get—and neither did Laman and Lemuel and a host of others
in the scriptures.
This is an important matter to consider at the start of a new year—and
every day ought to be the start of a new year and a new life. Such is the
wonder of faith, repentance, and the miracle of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The poet Robert Browning wrote:
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in his hand
Who saith, “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!” 2
To all such of every generation, I call out, “Remember Lot’s wife.” Faith
is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there.
Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that
Christ truly is the “high priest of good things to come” (Hebrews
9:11).
Keep your eyes on your dreams, however distant and far away. Live to see
the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, of trust and divine love that
will transform your life today, tomorrow, and forever. That is a New Year’s
resolution I ask you to keep.
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