“But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.” Genesis 19:26 (NKJV)
We aren’t given Lot’s wife’s name, but let’s look at her story for a minute to see what we can learn to help us today. The general story is that two angels came in the evening to Sodom and Lot befriended them. Then the angels told Lot that the city was going to be destroyed and to gather his immediate and extended family and leave the city before it was to be destroyed.
So Lot went to the various homes and tried to convince his relatives to leave the city with him, but they refused. They thought it was a joke. Early the next morning the angels told Lot to take his wife and two daughters that still lived at home and leave immediately. Yet Lot hesitated.
Why would Lot hesitate if he believed that he was talking to angels? As a parent, I know how hard it is to allow your grown children to make decisions that you do not feel is making the right eternal choice. It is hard to let them make their own mistakes and in this situation, Lot understands that the decisions could be eternal in nature. The Bible doesn’t tell us the reason Lot hesitated.
However, the angels took the hands of Lot, his wife, and his two daughters and led them outside the city. Then the angels told them to run, escape to the mountains and not to look back. Lot convinced the angels to allow him to go to the small city of Zoar because he didn’t think he could survive in the mountains.
But, Lot’s wife looked back and the penalty was that she became a pillar of salt. What in my life is God asking me to not look back at? I can think of a wide variety of situations that God has called me to leave behind and not to return to. Each time I have been better off from an eternal perspective because where I was wasn’t where God could bless. If I had choose to look back, I might start longing to the old life-style again. The lifestyle that God was calling me from because it was not living according to God’s laws. Maybe that was why the angels warned Lot and his family to not look back as the cities were being burned up.
Lord, help me to daily strive to only move toward you and the path you have set out before me. Help me to not look back at my previous lifestyle because there’s nothing worthwhile there for me!
Listen to Sandi Patty as she sings “In Heaven’s Eyes.”
Published on MyBibleRoom.com 1/9/24, 6:00 am