" Is the Past Holding Your Life Hostage?""To move forward today, you must learn to say good-bye to yesterday's hurts, tragedies, and baggage."
Having established the devastatingly destructive nature of allowing past failures to plague your future in our presentation last week, I now wish to expound upon this principle by taking it to another level.
While each of us must learn to free ourselves from the baggage of our past and look to the future with eyes of hope, we must also learn to allow others to do likewise.
Too often we are willing to look over our personal mistakes, only to dwell and linger in the mistakes of others. As stated so powerfully by Elder Holland in his recent BYU devotional and later Ensign address entitled "Remember Lot's wife" and "The Best is Yet to Be" we read the following concerning the importance of forgiving the past actions of others:
"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..."
"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 alot 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 to heal.""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. 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!"
Truly, as stated in the scriptures, we are required to forgive all men and leave the judgement up to God. As we do so, strving to free both ourselves and others from the baggage of our pasts, I know that life will become more enjoyable. We will readily forgive and be forgiven, and our lives will be filled with the most important attribute of all; charity.
I like this and it is totally true. Forgetting and forgiving the faults of others is just as, if not more, important than forgiving ourselves. If we can only grow by learning from our mistakes, our relationships with others can only grow by making mistakes together and being forgiving. I love those Elder Holland quotes!
ReplyDeleteOften times we talk about forgiving others but the real tragedy is that we often never talk about forgiving ourselves for the grievances we committed to ourselves and others. Our lack of reconciliation prevents and hinders our further growth.
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