The Light that Lighteth Every Man

Today I had the unique experience of attending the high school graduation for graduates at the Utah State Prison.  I was moved at the opportunity to hear some of them speak and encourage each other to persevere through their difficulties.  They talked of their struggles and failures as well as their determination to succeed.  As one of them spoke I had the brief thought, “I wonder why he is here in prison?” but then this was immediately followed by another thought, “It doesn’t matter!”  What mattered is that these were people trying to change, to put their past behind them, to move forward to better things.  They had made a sacrifice to try to reform their lives through education while in prison and were trying to give new hope to their future.  It was a privilege to be able to be a part of that celebration and support them in their efforts to make their future better than their past.     

             As I sat in the ceremony I thought of a statement I heard a Bishop once give about repentance and looking towards the future.  He said that as we go through our lives we are like cement trucks leaving a cement trail constantly behind us.  No matter what we do, we cannot change that—the past is the past.  What is important is where we put our focus.  If all we can see is that cement trail for ourselves or for others, with all of its sins and mistakes permanently hardened there, then we cannot really move forward.  We have to be able to turn and look forward, to focus on the future instead of the past.  Of course where there is sin repentance needs to take place, but once it does, once the wrongs have been righted as much as possible, we have to let the future define us and others instead of the past.  The Savior sees us for who we can become whereas we often define ourselves and others based on what we or they have done.  Paul is the great example of this.  Right after the Savior had stopped Saul on the road and called him to repentance, He described him as a “chosen vessel” (Acts 9:15).  This was not based on what Paul had done but rather on what he was going to do.  He had most recently been helping to put Christians to death and had not yet had even the time for repentance.  And yet the Lord was already calling him a chosen vessel—the Lord could see past his past and focus on his future.       
             The gospel of Jesus Christ allows us to turn towards the future no matter what our past has been.  Though the Lord tells us that when we repent, “I, the Lord, remember them no more,” we usually don’t have that blessing for we do still remember our past misdeeds (Doctrine and Covenants 58:42).  But with repentance, He can “take away the guilt from our hearts, through the merits of his Son” so that we can turn to the future and forget the guilt of the past (Alma 24:10).  Whether these graduates know it or not, I felt strongly at the event that the Savior is indeed an integral part of the change they are making.  It is He who allows the guilt to be taken from our hearts, it is the Light of Christ that motivates us to change, it is He who stands “pleading our cause” before the Father (Doctrine and Covenants 45:3).  As we seek to change our lives for the better, we cannot but move in the direction of His light “that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:2).