Our youngest daughter Ashlyn was married in the Salt Lake Temple the end of December 2015 to Scott. We believe that when a couple is married or "sealed" in a temple by one who has had the Holy Priesthood conferred on him and therefore has the authority to marry not just for time but also for eternity. We will be married or sealed to our spouse forever if we honor covenants or promises that we make in the temple. Scott's uncle, Elder Brent Nielsen who is a member of the Mormon Church First Quorum of Seventy performed the sealing. I have been to some very thoughtful, inspiring sealings but Elder Nielsen took about 30 minutes to teach all of us about the temple and the Plan of Salvation, that we also refer to as the Plan of Happiness. I wasn't able to take notes as I was seated next to the Bride, but I tried to write what I remembered later. He taught so beautifully and so simply and couched his teachings in words that we could talk about outside the temple. He first said that as you leave the temple today, you are now in that, "lone and dreary world," and the first thing that Satan did was to try and instill embarrassment, guilt and fear into the hearts of Adam and Eve, and in turn us. The opposite of fear is faith. In the garden, according to Abraham, Adam and Eve were both naked and were not ashamedl Genesis tells us that after eating the forbidden fruit, they knew they were naked and they hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, because they were afraid. FEAR! If you have faith you will not fear and vice versa.
Eve with her driving maternal instincts and qualities, made all her decisions based on her children. Adam had to learn that from her. Elder Nielson told the men to value their wives and their concerns and opinions.
Genesis said that the Lord made coats of skin for Adam and Eve and he clothed them. They were given their temple endowments or part of them before the Lord exiled them into the lone and dreary world to till the ground and face all the associated problems and hardships that accompany mortality. Genesis says, "Cursed is the ground FOR THY SAKE." In my mind the trials and sorrows we face in this life, "are for our good," or for our growth. It is and they are part of the plan, but as we leave the temple or live in mortality we do not have to face any of those challenges alone. Adam and Eve did not leave alone and did have children to share those joys and experiences, both good and bad. Elder Nielsen reminded us that we have Peter, James and John with us today, but their names are Thomas, Deiter and Henry. We sometimes forget or don't see clearly enough who these men really are. They are here to bring us back to our Father. We should study their lives and their words, as is the case with Elder Jeffrey R. Holland who I quote below.
I do not have complete notes, but one of the last things Elder Nielsen told us was that when Adam and Eve left the presence of the Lord or the garden they did not look back. I am not sure where that came from, because I have read Genesis and Abraham and do not find that, but he referenced Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's talk, “Remember Lot’s Wife”: Faith Is for the Future given January 2009 , which I have abridged. The entire text is online
It is Luke 17:32, where the Savior cautions, “Remember Lot’s wife.”“Escape for thy life,” the Lord said, “look not behind thee . . . ; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed” (Genesis 19:17; emphasis added).
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.
Apparently what was wrong with Lot’s wife was that she wasn’t just looking back; in her heart she wanted to go back. 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).
In short, her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future. That, apparently, was at least part of her sin.
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.
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.
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).
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.”
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!
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—
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. - Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
A good message for all of us. A good message for new members. A good message for a new bride and groom, along with all the other messages that have been given by so many for so many years.
