L is for "Look Not Behind Thee"

"Look not behind thee." A phrase many of you will recognize as one used by the Lord to Lot and his family as they are fleeing the city of Sodom which is about to be destroyed by God.

Let's back up the story a bit though to how Lot came to be in this wicked city in the first place.

Lot was the nephew of Abraham. They traveled and lived together for a good stretch of time but the time came for them to settle and part ways. Lot had first choice of the land and it is said that he "dwelled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent toward Sodom." (Genesis 13:12). There's Lot's first problem, he has his tent set up facing the city of Sodom so that's all he sees everyday whenever he looks outside. We gain what we set our sights on so it isn't altogether too surprising when in the next chapter we learn that Lot has actually moved into Sodom. Skip ahead a few chapters and we learn that Sodom had become so wicked that the Lord has decided to destroy it, there were less than righteous people in that whole city (see Genesis 18). An angel comes and warns Lot to take his family and flee with the instruction "look not behind thee" (Genesis 19:15-17). And so they fled, "But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt." (Genesis 19:26). She was so focused on looking back that she lost the ability to move forward.

Here's this great video I found about what we learn from Lot's wife and how looking back prevents us from new beginnings:

 Okay great so we know we need to look forward and not look back but why do we continue to look back anyways? There are many different reasons but I think the main one is that we feel the need to hold on to something there. It might be guilt, it might be a friendship, a relationship, a loved one, a job, the list is extensive. For whatever reason though, something keeps us looking back wishing we could have done something different, wishing to be back where we were. Doing so will not be helpful to us though. Elder Jeffrey R Holland stated it this way:

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 ("The Best Is Yet to Be").

When we are full of faith, we are able to look to the the future instead of dwelling on the past. Like Elder Holland stated, there are valuable lessons to be learned from the past but these lessons are to help us learn and move forward, not to keep us looking back. There is some wisdom in the most recent Disney power ballad which proclaims, "I'm never going back, the past is in the past." We shouldn't desire to move backwards into the past but rather forward into our future. As we learn to let go of what holds us back, and we rely on the atonement, we will be able to become better than we were before.

Let me conclude with one of my favorite scriptures. It comes from the story of a people who were told to by the Lord to build barges that would lead them to a promised land. The barges had no sails and the Lord said this of it "ye shall be as a whale in midst of the sea; for mountain waves shall dash upon you. Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the winds have gone forth out of my mouth, and also the rains and the floods have I sent forth" (Ether 2:24) The Lord here states that He is in control of the winds and the rains and that He was driving them "toward the promised land" (Ether 6:5). Our past, present and future are in the hand of the Lord and He is sending "ferocious winds" that will indeed blow us to our promised land, eternal life, to be in the presence of God again. We need only to endure and remember to look forward and "look not behind thee."