Remember Lot's Wife

UV 2879/10000 Remember Lot’s Wife
And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.
Genesis 19 v 17
Having been saved by grace through Jesus, we should only progress and not regress or look back. We cannot return to our former life of rebellion against God, our Creator and Maker. We cannot turn away from His love manifested through Jesus and His sacrificial life and death for the very journey of Christ on earth was sacrificial not just in His death. We cannot look back with regret on the pain, anguish, sufferings of our past or even on the comforts and pleasures of our past. Jesus has caught us on our hands and brought us out of Hades, out of curses, out of darkness into light. We should not for even a moment look back into the darkness of our past as Lot’s wife did. The poignant parallel of this uni-verse is contained in the three words of Jesus in the gospel of Luke, “Remember Lot’s wife.” We ought to learn from her example and not look back into our past. Like St Paul we need to look at our Christ-less lives as baggage and garbage of our past- be it our gains or losses, our achievements or failures, our strengths or weaknesses, our hopes or frustrations. The Lord has called us to be new creatures with a new forward-looking vision, new passion and a new sense of mission to save our souls, those of our near and dear as well as other fellow beings.
Lot’s family was saved by the intercession of Abraham, the intervention of angels. We have been saved by the intercession of many and the intervention of Jesus. He has led us into so great a salvation from so terrible a past, so horrible a death. Our eyes should focus on Him and His leadership and not on our petty squabbles, our ego struggles that drag us down and not move us toward our eternal destiny in Christ. We have escaped and taken shelter in Zion, God’s mountain. We have been asked to forsake the world and love the Word. We are warned never to look back wistfully at our past as if it would have been a greener pasture even as Lot’s wife wanted to steal one last look at the house, the possessions, the pleasures she enjoyed in the city of Sodom that was faced the brunt of the wrath of God for her ungodliness and abounding evil.
The Lord desires to lift our heads up and to cause us to turn away from the world. We need to heed His warning, obey His command explicitly and continually. We cannot allow ourselves slack or even a moment’s pause to neglect so great a salvation that has been wrought for us at such great cost. We need to value our “great escape” from eternal death and judgement. We should take neither godly admonition nor God’s mercy lightly. If we love the world, we will hate the Lord. If we love the Lord, we will hate the world. We cannot have a divided heart, divided mind or be double minded. The double- minded will not only not receive anything from the Lord but will loose what they already have. We cannot keep our feet in two boats- one in the boat of Jesus and another in the boat of the world. We are bound to fall in between.
Prateep V Philip