The Best Is Yet To Be

Definitely something to live by in 2012

The Best Is Yet To Be

In Luke 17:32, the Jesus said, “Remember Lot’s wife?“ A living
apostle, Elder Jeffery Holland, counseled us that “as a new year begin
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.

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.

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.

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).

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
sometimes harder than to forgive: forget. And when it comes to mind
again, forget it again.

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!”

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.
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“The Best Is Yet To Be, Elder Holland, BYU Devotional, Jan. 13, 2009