Overcoming Our Mistakes

Overcoming Our Mistakes

BY LOWELL L. BENNION

I had a friend who not long ago spent an hour and a half telling me about his wife who a few years back made a big mistake in her life and who does nothing now but brood over it. She has lost her purpose and joy in living and has even threatened to commit suicide. All of her wonderful potential as a human being has come to a halt, and this is tragic for her and her family. Furthermore, because she is so unhappy within herself, she makes life almost unbearable for her friends and her husband.

Historians have said you can’t fight a war on two fronts; if you do, you generally lose. I find, too, that you can’t carry on personally two battles in life—one the outside battle and the other the battle within yourself. And he who fights himself least is better prepared to fight the outside battle best. In fact, the outside battle is always there. To enjoy life is to acknowledge that it is a battle and there will always be problems. There will always be disappointments, and one must learn to enjoy the battle rather than the successful outcome.

All of us make mistakes, and some of us very serious ones. Any thoughtful person feels a kind of failure because of his sins or moral failures. If there are any sinners in the Church besides myself, I am talking to you, and I’d like to suggest what we might do about coping with our failures of the past so that they don’t immobilize us for life today and for fighting the outside battle.

Here are just a few suggestions on what we might do to overcome our feeling of failure, our feeling of wrongdoing, and learn to live with all our power in the present without dragging the mistakes of the past with us.

One doesn’t get clean by rolling in the mire. One doesn’t get clean and whole by brooding unduly over the past, although we can certainly learn from our mistakes. I’ve learned that there’s no strength in weakness; there’s no strength in sin; and we don’t overcome our mistakes and our sins by fighting them directly. I think we may succumb to them if we dwell upon them too much.

The second suggestion I have is that we ought to realize that no matter what we’ve done in life, no matter what we do, God and Christ still love us just as much as they did before we failed. God and Christ do not separate themselves from the sinner, from the wrongdoer.

I remember a missionary who had just recently returned from the mission field who came into the Institute of Religion when I was there. He had committed a grave mistake that caused him to think that his life was ruined forever. And I said to him, “God loves you just as much today as he did last Thursday,” and he couldn’t believe it. The thought had never occurred to him. He wept like a child. You know, sometimes we think that God loves us to the extent that we please him, to the extent that we’re good boys and girls, good men and women. Love from God is not earned. It is not merited; if it is, it is justice and reciprocity and reward. Love comes from a loving heart, and God’s love is unconditional. And he loves the worst of us and the best of us equally, I believe. We cause him to suffer when we do wrong, when he sees us live our lives in ways that destroy us, and when he sees us hurting other people—this must cause him pain.

Fathers, when you’re worried about your sons, you don’t love them less, and when they’re in trouble, you’re not less anxious. You really love them more. I can understand why Jesus said that when the shepherd went after the lost sheep and brought him home there was more rejoicing in heaven over the one that was lost than over the ninety and nine that were safe in the fold.

We once had a child who was very very ill and on the borderline of possible death. Our other children were well at the time. We loved the child who was ill; we rejoiced at the time of his recovery more than over the others who were well. At the moment that seemed to be the most important thing in our lives. And I think that that’s the way Christ and God must feel about the person who has done wrong and who comes back. Even before he comes back I think God is forgiving, whether he repents or not. He asks us to forgive. He doesn’t say forgive when people repent. He says forgive seven times seventy. I don’t think God would ask me to be forgiving when he is not. I think somehow that the principles of the gospel are his principles, too. Therefore, the reason we have to repent is to be able to forgive ourselves and to be able to get in harmony again with the principles and laws of good living. We don’t have to repent to earn God’s love, even though some scriptures portray him as being very angry with the sinner. Others portray him as angry with sin, not with the sinner.

Another way to overcome the past is to make amends. We know when we’ve done wrong, but sometimes we’re afraid to go to those whom we’ve wronged. We are too proud to admit our failures. But when we have the courage to do it, we find that a great reconciliation takes place. It’s the offended person’s responsibility to react to our efforts to be reconciled. And when we can’t compensate a person for a wrong, when it’s too late or impossible, then we can bless other people. We all belong together in this world. We’re brothers and sisters with the same Eternal Father; we belong to the same human community. There are others we can bless, though we can’t repair the damage we may have done to some of his children.

The past that some of us regret at certain points is not as fixed and rigid as we ordinarily think it is. If you have shameful moments in your past, you’re prone to isolate them, to make them rigid, and to think of them as being fixed. You can change your past. You can’t change single events in the past, but you can change the past as a whole the importance of every event in one’s past is constantly changing because of the kind of past that we’re building.

Years ago, a young girl confessed to my wife and me a very tragic period of her life. I won’t tell you about her life, but it was a tragic life, and I’ve never seen a girl with sadder eyes than this lovely girl of eighteen. And in trying to give her some comfort and hope for the future, I realized that we’re adding to our past; we’re building onto it each day we live. Life is not a rigid, fixed, quantitative kind of thing. It’s a growing, qualitative, whole thing. And the whole is greater than any of its parts, and gives meaning to its parts. My arm by itself hung on the wall is one thing; my arm as a part of my body and servant of my mind is another thing. An event in that girl’s past, or even ten events, were one thing at eighteen when she was in the depths of despair. And then she came into the fold, was baptized into the Church, found some faith in Christ, converted her husband, reared a fine family, and her life has been going like this ever since. This valley of failure in her life is one thing by itself; it’s another thing when it’s one dip in a long beautiful life. This idea makes life dynamic: it’s comforting and exciting to know that you can improve.

I think God feels this way about our lives. Here is a familiar verse from Ezekiel. He says, “But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him …” (Ezek. 8:21–22). The past is only significant in terms of what it has made you become.

Ezekiel continues: “All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done, he shall live. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God: and not that he should return from his ways and live?” (Ezek. 18:22–23). And Isaiah said: “… though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isa. 1:18.)

This I believe. If God loves us, his only interest is in us. “Let no one be called unhappy ’til his death. Measure not the work until the day is over and the labor is done.” I would say, don’t measure life ever—even into eternity—we’re still building on it; we’re changing it.

We ought to be aggressive in our desire and effort to do what is right. Many of us do wrong because we’re not thinking of the right. Our concept of the gospel is very general—we feel good about it; we have a testimony; but we don’t define what we believe in. We don’t say, I’m going to be honest, and what does honesty mean? And what does chastity mean, and what is the spirit of it, and what is the nature of it? I think we get caught unprepared when we don’t define for ourselves, repeatedly, what we believe, what values we hold to. We don’t tell ourselves why we believe in these values so that they become our very own—a part of us. They’re not God’s laws only; they’re our laws, too, because we’ve tested them and we believe in them. You don’t sit back apathetically and see what happens to you. You do better than your opponent.

Now why not be aggressive—and I don’t mean with words to boast or to be loud—why not clarify what values we believe in? This applies to you whether you’re a believer or a nonbeliever—Latter-day Saint, Catholic, Jew, Protestant, atheist, or anything else. Every man has to be whole within himself. Every man has to be one to be a man. He has to have integrity. You can’t have integrity without clarifying your convictions or values or goals. You can change them, but you must always have some. And so you clarify your ideals and you determine to act according to them. If you’re going to work in a bank and handle money, don’t decide while you’re handling money whether or not you’ll be honest. Decide before you go into the bank, before you accept the job. Say in your morning prayer, “Lord, help me not to take money today!” Money is such a temptation when your wife needs so many things. It is so easy to replace, we think. This is the way we get caught in dishonest actions. The apostle Paul said, “Wherefore, take unto you the whole armor of God … Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth and have on the breastplate of righteousness and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace.” (Eph. 6:13–15.) These words don’t mean much to us as symbols in this day, but “put on the armor of God,” and face life with whatever ideals you believe in, and uncertainty will disappear.

Make a friend of Jesus Christ. In the sacramental prayer each Sabbath day we hear and say that we bear witness to the Father that we take upon us the name of Jesus Christ, and always remember him, and keep his commandments, that we might have his Spirit to be with us. Now what does it mean to take upon us the name of Christ? What does it mean to always remember him? How many of us make him part of our daily lives without being fanatical, without behaving as if we belonged to some other world but still living in the world? How do we draw upon the strength that comes with fellowship with our Savior? Do we leave it to Protestants to talk about fellowship with Christ?

I had an experience in the mission field that is very memorable to me. A man came to me after Church—he was twice my age, a very unhappy person—and told me that he had committed a grave sin before he joined the Church, that his wife would not forgive him, would not divorce him, and constantly reminded him that he was a worthless person. He said, “I’ve come to think of myself as she thinks I am. How can I be whole again and pure of heart, clean in my thoughts?” I said, “What have you tried to do for this problem?” He said, “I’ve fought it. I’ve fought it.” I told him there must be a better way than to fight sin. We knelt in prayer together, and afterwards I gave him a book to read—As a Man Thinketh in His Heart, So Is He—and then I put my arm around him, gave him a firm handclasp, and told him that he could overcome his problem. And then by inspiration or coincidence I said to him, “How would you like to prepare the Lord’s supper for Sunday School?” (He was a teacher in the Aaronic Priesthood.) He said, “Do you think I’m worthy to do this?” I said, “No, I don’t think any of us really are. But I think Jesus would be pleased if you would render him this service.” And so he proceeded to set the Lord’s table each Sunday morning. After about six weeks I met him coming up the aisle before Sunday School. I put out my hand to reassure him. He put his hand behind his back and said nothing. I said, “Have I offended you?” He said, “Oh, no. I’ve just washed my hands with soap and hot water, and I can’t shake hands with you or any man until I’ve set the Lord’s table.” That’s the most beautiful reverence I’ve seen in that simple act of setting the Lord’s table. I was so pleased. In another six weeks he came to me after church again and said, “I’m a new man.”

Then I asked him to give a talk in church on some principle of the gospel of Christ that he really believed in and why. I kept thinking about the Savior. Well, serving the Savior in a simple way and thinking about him during the week, this man became a new creature. It was beautiful. And I realized that I’d never used the Savior in my own life in the same way. I don’t mind telling you that I did after that. I had the wonderful thrill of overcoming what I thought was a weakness in me by thinking of the Savior and making him the center of my prayers and my life.

Well, my young friends, the biggest tragedy of life is not to live—not to function with your full soul, with your whole life, with enthusiasm, with spirit, with faith, with love. And so, I humbly pray that none of you will be so burdened by mistakes, by failures, and by sin that you won’t have the courage and the wisdom to turn to the ideals of the gospel, to the wonderful Son of God, and to each other to find the strength to live life as it is meant to be lived. It’s a beautiful existence we have, and it is not too late for any of us to enjoy it to the fullest.

Remember Lot's Wife

Here is a great talk about overcoming and not looking back. Sometimes we have a tendency to go back to the challenges of the past. Or we struggle to have the faith to move forward and into new opportunities. We sometimes lack courage to move forward. The talk also addresses our challenge of leaving the past in the past. He talks about forgiveness and marriage.

Before we get into the talk. Here is a fun video about the story of Lot's Wife told by the average guy. :)

Remember Lot’s Wife

JEFFREY R. HOLLAND

Jeffrey R. Holland was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles 

of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 

when this devotional address was given on 13 January 2009.

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You all look so good. Sister Holland walked in and said, “I think I’m going to cry.” You have to understand: Give yourselves 20 or 30 years—then you’ll know how we feel coming back here.
We love this campus. We’re thrilled to be with you on it, and we love you personally with all our hearts.

You have had, will have, and now have better university presidents than I was, but you’ll never have one who loves you and loves this university more than I do. Thank you for serving here, and thank you for being in attendance on a bright, clear, January morning.

We are grateful to President and Sister Samuelson for their kindness and their leadership at this university. We actually know something about their jobs and what they entail. You and we are very lucky to have them at the helm of this special school, and we praise them publicly for the time they spend, the success they are having, and the strength that they bring. I loved every word of their counsel to you last week, and I pray that my remarks to you today are consistent with their messages about light, about trust, and about the privilege it is to have the gospel of Jesus Christ enhance our study at BYU. President and Sister Samuelson, we do love you. You have our prayers, our gratitude, and our support.

The start of a new year is the traditional time to take stock of our lives and see where we are going, measured against the backdrop of where we have been. I don’t want to talk to you about New Year’s resolutions, because you only made five of them and you have already broken four. (I give that remaining one just another week.) But I do want to talk to you about the past and the future, not so much in terms of New Year’s commitments per se, but more with an eye toward any time of transition and change in your lives—and those moments come virtually every day of our lives.

As a scriptural theme for this discussion, I have chosen the second-shortest verse in all of holy scripture. I am told that the shortest verse—a verse that every missionary memorizes and holds ready in case he is called on spontaneously in a zone conference—is John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” Elders, here is a second option, another shortie that will dazzle your mission president in case you are called on two zone conferences in a row. It is Luke 17:32, where the Savior cautions, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

Hmmm. What did He mean by such an enigmatic little phrase? To find out, I suppose we need to do as He suggested. Let’s recall who Lot’s wife was.

The original 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]

Then our theme today comes in the next verse. 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.

In the time we have this morning, I am not going to talk to you about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, nor of the comparison the Lord Himself has made to those days and our own time. 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.

One of the purposes of history is to teach us the lessons of life. George Santayana, who should be more widely read than he is on a college campus, is best known for saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (Reason in Common Sense, vol. 1 of The Life of Reason [1905–1906]).

So, if history is this important—and it surely is—what did Lot’s wife do that was so wrong? As something of a student of history, I have thought about that and offer this as 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 they were past the city limits, she was already missing what Sodom and Gomorrah had offered her. As Elder Maxwell once said, such people know they should have their primary residence in Zion, but they still hope to keep a summer cottage in Babylon (see Larry W. Gibbons, “Wherefore, Settle This in Your Hearts,” Ensign, November 2006, 102; also Neal A. Maxwell, A Wonderful Flood of Light [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1990], 47).

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.

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. 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.

It is here at this moment in this little story that we wish Lot’s wife had been a student at BYU enrolled in a freshman English class. With any luck, she might have read, as I did, this verse from Edwin Arlington Robinson:

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam’s neighbors. . . .

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the medieval grace
Of iron clothing. . . .

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.
[Miniver Cheevy (1910), stanzas 1–3, 6, 8]

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; to miss the here-and-now-and-tomorrow because we are so trapped in the there-and-then-and-yesterday—these are some of the sins, if we may call them that, of both Lot’s wife and old Mr. Cheevy. (Now, as a passing comment, I don’t know whether Lot’s wife, like Miniver, was a drinker, but if she was, she certainly ended up with plenty of salt for her pretzels.)

One of my favorite books of the New Testament is Paul’s too-seldom-read letter to the Philippians. After reviewing the very privileged and rewarding life of his early years—his birthright, his education, his standing in the Jewish community—Paul says that all of that was nothing (“dung” he calls it) 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.’” Then comes this verse:

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 where we will win “the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

At this point, let me pause and add a lesson that applies both in your own life and also in the lives of others. There is something in us, at least in too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life—either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others. That 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—our own or other people’s—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 from his community. 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 very active and happy in it.

Then, after several years, he came back 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, that idiosyncrasy, this quirky nature, and did such and such and such and such. And wasn’t it all just hilarious?

Well, you know what happened. 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. Yes, they managed to rip out of his grasp that for which Christ had grasped him. And he died even more sadly than Miniver Cheevy, though as far as I know the story, through absolutely no fault of his own.

That happens in marriages, too, and in other relationships we have. 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 up some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died trying to heal.

Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is it 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 God, 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. It is worse than Miniver Cheevy, and in some ways worse than Lot’s wife, because at least there he and she were only destroying themselves. In these cases of marriage and family and wards and apartments and neighborhoods, we can end up destroying so many, 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: “Behold, 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 their earlier mistakes—and that “someone” might be ourselves. We can be so hard on ourselves, often much more so than with others!

Now, like the Anti-Nephi-Lehies of the Book of Mormon, bury your weapons of war, and leave them buried. Forgive, and do that which is harder than to forgive: Forget. And when it comes to mind again, forget it again.

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 those 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 and 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 and repentance and the miracle of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We started this hour with a little verse remembered from one of my BYU English classes. May I move toward a close with a few lines from another favorite poet whom I probably met in that same class or one similar to it. For the benefit of all BYU students in the new year of 2009, 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!”
[Rabbi Ben Ezra (1864), stanza 1]

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.

Twenty years later I would, on occasion, look out of the window of the President’s Home across the street from the Brimhall Building and picture there on the sidewalk two newlywed BYU students, down on their money and down even more on their confidence. And as I would gaze out that window, usually at night, I would occasionally see not Pat and Jeff Holland but you and you and you, walking that same sidewalk. I would see you sometimes as couples, sometimes as a group of friends, sometimes as just a lone student. I knew something of what you were feeling. Some of you were having thoughts such as these: 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 life 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.”

My young brothers and sisters, I pray you will have a wonderful semester, a wonderful new year, and a wonderful life all filled with faith and hope and charity. 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, and I leave a blessing on you—every one of you—to be able to do so and to be happy, in the name of Him who makes it all possible, even the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.