No
Hope Behind Us - The
Story of Lots’ wife: Genesis 19:26
Author Nancy Bauer,
Washington
They had just been
rescued. They had been chosen to be taken out of the annihilation of Sodom and
Gomorrah. They had been chosen to be the ‘saved’ and the ‘salt of the earth’.
Jesus would claim that His ‘saved’ were the ‘salt of the earth’. (Matt. 5:13)
All that they
had, all that they had worked hard for, lay behind them. Every friend they had
made, every acquaintance including their family and maybe even their priest,
had been left behind. They had left it all with no time to gather their things
or say good bye. Everything they had known was behind them.
They followed
the angel up the hill. “Hurry, hurry!”
Where were they
going? Lots wife wondered.
Where could they
go? The angel told them it would be total destruction. All that lay before them
was unknown. What would they do now?
Then it came. An
explosion like none heard on earth before. An explosion that echoed a crossed
the valley and seemed to go on and on. Would it never end?
From the top of
the hill, they could still feel the heat. From the top of the hill and facing
in the opposite direction, they could see the reflection from the firey obliteration; shadows created by excruciating light.
“Do not look. Do
not look back” the angel had said.
But why? That was all they had back there. She wanted to
remember it. She wanted to remember the good times, as few as they may have
been. She wanted to remember the things she had back there. Why couldn’t she
remember the past? She had had a lot of fun in Sodom and Gomorrah. She wanted
to see what had happened to it. To remember it for one last time…one last look.
And so she
turned. Lots wife turned to see what was happening to her past life and her
memories.
Her eyes filled
with terror. She could see nothing but fire and smoke and smoldering ashes. In
a blink of an eye, all her past life was destroyed. Everything she had
cherished had disappeared.
Her face and
arms became white as snow. Her legs and feet could not be moved. She became
frozen in time; she would forever stare at her destructive past and not be able
to move. All evil had been destroyed.
She had chosen
her lot. She had chosen to stay stuck in her past and not move forward into the
hope of the future that God had for her.
She had turned into
an unmovable, stuck-in-one-place-forever-facing-backward, pillar of salt;
unusable by God as His ‘salt of the earth’. She faced the past that had
destroyed her because of its sin.
If she had only
known that her hope was ahead of her, would she have turned around? If she had
only known that hope is before us in time, not behind us in the past, would she
have become a Deborah or a Mary?
Hope is before
us, not behind us. If we are to be usable as the ‘salt of the earth’, than we
must look ahead to the hope of God and all He has for us. Our purpose lies
before us, not behind us.
We
must think of ourselves as white, powdery salt that is picked up and blown into
every inch of the earth by the winds of the Holy Spirit; usable and spicy. We
are to spice up the earth with the hope of God’s Word for He is the hope of the
world.
Let’s
remember what Paul said: “….the one thing I do, however, is to
forget what is behind me and do my best to reach what is ahead. So I run straight toward the goal in order to
win the prize, which is God's call through Christ Jesus to the life above.” (Phil. 3:13,14)
Looking
ahead to our hope IS our Hope. Our salty destiny beckons us there.
