When you're driving a car, you need to keep looking ahead. Of course, you'll glance occasionally in the rearview mirror. But to get anywhere, you'll have to look ahead. As with cars, so with living.

We're sometimes drawn into the trap of looking longingly at the past. Maybe the house is filled with heirlooms that we've become overly attached to. Sometimes we get bogged down going over past regrets, or even past accomplishments. Whatever form the backward focus takes, it can get in the way of progress.

There's a very instructive illustration of this human tendency to look back. A man named Lot lives with his family in the city of Sodom (see Gen., chaps. 18, 19). God warns him to flee the city, since it is going to be destroyed. Lot and his family evacuate as earthquakes and fire began to erupt. God gives them one more warning, "Don't look back."

The family races into the surrounding mountains, and they all obey the orders except Lot's wife. She really loves this city with all of its allurements. So she lingers at the tail end of the group, and longingly looks back. It's hard to say exactly what happened, but when Lot's wife looked back, we're told, she turned into a block of salt (Gen. 19: 26).

Unless it becomes clear how unproductive living in the past is, we all run the danger of missing out on the good that today has to offer. "Man walks in the direction towards which he looks, and where his treasure is, there will his heart be also" (Science, and Health, p. 451).

A farmer with a crop to plant makes no progress by sitting in the field and just thinking about last season's successes and failures. It might be constructive to think back and apply past experiences to the present, but that would be a kind of active thinking that implies a desire to move forward productively. Just looking back with an attitude of longing, recrimination, or regret, on the other hand, robs us of what we can accomplish here and now. Daydreaming this way actually places us in opposition to what God has set before us.

Our family learned how important it is to keep moving ahead and not look back. We had to sell our house in a market that had become really soft. In order to sell, we had to price the house so low that we lost our initial investment and all of the money we'd put into fixing the place up. In all, we lost more than the equivalent of a year's income. We even had to pay an additional $3,000 in order to close escrow on the sale.

This felt like a crushing blow. The temptation to look back with recrimination and sorrow was overwhelming at times. And yes, it was valid to look back and learn from the experience. But we knew we needed to be free of the hypnotic lure to rivet on this sad episode with feelings of bitter defeat or condemnation.

We began to free ourselves from this obsession as we started to value the current good in our lives and to set our sights forward. We prayed, and as we did, we realized that right then we could be of help to many people. So we set about letting God use us in this way. We followed the lead of the man who long ago said, "... this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:13, 14).

Step by step, the failures of that experience lost their grip, as we began to look for ways in which we could bless other people. In just two years, we could afford the down payment on a house that was far lovelier than anything we'd ever anticipated. And this place provided us with even greater means to reach out to others more easily. For example, there was more room for growing children, and space for an office on the first floor that provided a quiet sanctuary for visitors. Our new focus of thought also meant that whereas the beauty of the house would have been important to us at one time, now it was its functionality that attracted us the most.

We were also able to let go of belongings that we no longer had a use for, of hurt feelings, of those ghostly memories that had been bogging us down, and of the fear that evil would be repeated. The sincere desire to help people right now and to move forward opened the door to inspiration. It released us from the pull of the past.

We learned something: consistently valuing the good that each new day holds is what frees us to progress. Accepting the good that is already at hand, and doing whatever the work is that lies before us, result in free-flowing forward motion.

Turning your face forward does not devalue yesterday. No, it places equal value on the opportunities God gives for this day. Today needs your full attention. Today requires valuing and accepting what God is giving right now.