Janus

Janus. The god of passageways, gates, doors, and beginnings and endings. He is often depicted with two faces (a lot like creepy Voldemort coming out of the back of Quirrell’s head in Philospher’s Stone actually), one looking forward and one looking back. That way he could see who was coming in and who was going out. His name is where we get the name of January from, as he sees the old year and what has passed as well as the new year and what is to come. The new year is a passageway from the old to the new.

Sometimes that can be helpful. Sometimes we need to know where we’ve been so we can know where to go. Sometimes seeing where we’ve been also helps us see how far we’ve come.

But sometimes looking back like that can be a problem if you start dwelling on it. And that’s what I really love about Elder Holland’s BYU devotional in January 2009, “Remember Lot’s Wife.” Looking back too much can hold us back. Dwelling on the past means our faith cannot grow.

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.

I particularly found this quote important to me in my life and how I relate to myself and others. Remembering this has been an important change in my life this last two years, and one that I’m still working on.

There is something in us, at least in too many of us, that particularly fails to forgive and forget earlier mistakes in life—either mistakes we ourselves have made or the mistakes of others. That 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—our own or other people’s—is the worst kind of wallowing in the past from which we are called to cease and desist.

…

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 a lot 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 trying to heal.

Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is it charity? Yes! Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried.

With the new year, with the new mistakes that we will each make, with the new challenges we will all face, and with all of our pasts that got us where we are today, I love these closing words of Elder Holland:

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.”