Remember Lot's Wife

Some thought that have become especially meaningful as I prepare for a new experience in Moscow...

From a talk Jeffrey R. Holland gave at a BYU devotional January 13, 2009:

"Surely, 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...I am not going to talk to you about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah...I am not even going to talk about obedience and disobedience. I just want to talk to you for a few minutes about looking back and looking ahead...

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 they were past the city limits, she was already missing what Sodom and Gomorrah had offered her...It is possible that Lot's wife looked back with resentment toward the Lord for what He was asking her to leave behind...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.

So, as a new year starts, 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, 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...[Lot's wife] 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...

Some of you were having thoughts such as thes: Is there any future for me? What does a new year or a new semester or a new major or a new romance hold for me? Will I be safe? Will I be sound? Can I trust in the Lord and in the future? Or would it be better to look back, to go back, to go home?

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.' "

http://speeches.byu.edu