Sunday Snippet

Happy New Year

Fiona Rea taught us this week from a talk of elder Jeffery R Holland, "The Best is Yet to Be", Ensign Jan. 2010,
The start of the new Year is the traditional time to take stock of our lives. In Luke 17:32 the Saviour cautions us to "Remember Lot's wife". We discussed who Lot's wife was and what she did that was so wrong. Lot's wife was reluctant to leave her home and it is possible that she 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. Her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in 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 yesterday, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from 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."
Lot's wife did not have faith to know that the future could be as good if not better than the past.

"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."
We need to be gentle on ourselves and on others and take advantage of the Saviour's atonement.
"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. ... 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 only destroyed herself. In cases of marriage and family, wards and branches, apartments and neighbourhoods, we can endup destroying so many others."
"Perhaps at the beginning of a new year there is no greater requirment 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)"
Fiona gave out paper and we wrote down the things we didn't want to take with us into 2011; things like impatience, lack of understanding, inability to use computers etc. and we played Jenga as we shared what we had written. (Fiona was expecting the structure to come crashing down but it had been built into an extraordinary thing.)
Elder Holland counseled us to keep our eyes on our dreams. Live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, of trust and divine love that will transform our lives today, tomorrow and forever. That is a new years resolution to keep.
Thank you Fiona for our lesson.

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I have included the poem from Fiona Cluff's lesson a couple of weeks past if you are interested go to that Sunday Snippet.