Abraham's Preface

Looking at Life Backwards

You know, it’s a funny thing.  When you are living life and looking forward towards your future a lot of concerns take on momentous magnitude, “Will I be safe?”, “Will I be healthy?”, “Will I be able to take care of my family?”, “Will I survive the perils of this world to live eternally with Heavenly Father?”.  But as you grow older you come to recognize a secret of life that is lost on younger folks.  This secret is: “Life looks different when you look at it backwards” (that is, as you examine your life from the most recent events backwards towards earlier events).  You can see patterns that went unnoticed as you traveled through life.  Concerns, which at the time seemed of the greatest importance; become trivial.  The consequences of choices made earlier in life become very clear.

My life on earth is over.  As I reflect backwards over that life I find my perspective is often very different than it was ‘back in the day’.  There are lessons to be learned in examining my life.  How wise Heavenly Father is to provide his children the opportunity to study it.  As you probably know, Heavenly Father instructed the Holy Spirit to cause my story to be written in scripture.  From this story God’s children of every age have looked back at my life and learned principles to apply in their own lives.  This is the theme of my journals found here in TheCityOfZion’s Family History Center.  I share with you perspectives of my life as I reflect backwards over it.  I encourage you to “follow along” by examining the inspired words of scripture.