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DON’T LOOK BACK!

There’s an old story in the Scriptures about Abraham and Lot. When they separated their flocks Abraham was generous. He gave Lot the best land. Lot, however, chose to live in the city. He moved to Sodom, a busy and sinful place. But now, three strange visitors told Abraham stories of increasing wickedness in Sodom and the terrible punishment that was coming to the city. It and all its inhabitants would be wiped out.

Sure enough, a catastrophe did occur. Lot was allowed to escape, but was warned not to look back. His wife disobeyed and according to tradition she was turned into a pillar of salt.

Now, what’s the lesson in this story? Well, all of us experience catastrophes in our lives. All of us suffer losses and adversities. All of us come to moments of truth when we must make decisions. All of us face situations when we’re responsible for our own commitments.

At these times we have a choice of going on and looking forward or of stopping and looking back. Jesus spoke to this when he said, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).
The writer of Hebrews gave an even sterner warning. “In the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance . . . ” (Heb. 6:4,6).

The Apostle Peter said, “If they have escaped the corruption of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and are again entangled in it and overcome, they are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning. It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them” (II Peter 2:20-21, niv).

When Jesus mentions “looking back” and when the writer of Hebrews says, “fallen away“; what did they mean?
Well, they didn’t mean recalling our roots. They didn’t mean reliving our joys. They didn’t mean remembering our successes. Those are legitimate ways of dealing with the past.

Instead, they meant having second thoughts after we’ve taken a moral stand. They meant ceasing to grow when we encounter difficulties. They meant quitting and giving up after we’ve begun a worthwhile project.

This story about Lot and his wife tells us that we can’t live in the past. There are many ways of looking back. We can look back in regret and wallow in guilt. We can look back in nostalgia and live in our memories. We can look back at easier paths with longing when the going gets tough.

But, looking back in this manner inevitably petrifies us and hardens us and destroys us. When we let the past contaminate the present, we lose all possibility of joy. Regret and guilt cause inner conflict. One old couple fought constantly. Finally, they solved their problem by deciding that if something had happened before a certain date in the past, they weren’t going to talk about it.

That eliminated a lot of conflicts because most of their arguments centered around unfinished business that occurred years before. It was useless to keep stirring old issues.

In the case of moral and spiritual failures, there is forgiveness. With the slate wiped clean, we can look to the future. We don’t have to stop living because of it. We must not become immobilized. We must not look back and freeze in that position forever.

The truth of the Christian gospel is that we can always start anew. Paul stresses regeneration. He said, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin-- But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life” (Rom. 6:4,6,22, niv).

And then he said, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! ” (II Cor. 5:17, niv).

Too much nostalgia can also be unproductive. When Thomas Edison’s factory burned in 1914, the great inventor’s dreams seemed to be going up in smoke. His son Charles said, “My heart ached for him. Here he was, sixty seven years old, and everything he had worked for was in ashes.”

Nevertheless, the next morning when Edison looked at the ruins of his factory, he said, “There’s value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.” What a wonderful perspective.

When a business fails or a job’s lost or a personal ambition is dashed; there is a chance to start over, to learn from our mistakes, to prepare for a different approach. We need to say: "The past is gone. There is nothing I can do to change it.”

Vivien Larrimore gives this advice in a poem,

I’ve shut the door on yesterday—
It’s sorrow and mistakes.
And now I throw the key away
With all the grief it makes,
I’ve shut the door on yesterday—
To seek another room,
And furnish it with hope and smiles,
And every springtime bloom.
I’ve shut the door on yesterday
And thrown the key away.
Tomorrow holds no fears for me,
Since I have found today.

Leave the past behind. Go forward! Don’t look back! Settling for an easy path when the going gets tough sabotages our chance for victory.

A skiing family was a long way from their car. The wind was cold in their faces and there were no trees to break its force. Six-year-old Jonathan turned to his dad and said, “I don’t want to ski that way, Daddy. It’s too hard.

It was hard, but they had to ski that way to get back to the car. Once they had made it to the car and warmed the engine up, rubbed their toes and fingers back to life, and drank some hot cocoa from the thermos bottle, Jonathan piped up, “Hey, we did it!” His sense of pride showed that sometimes the only way to accomplish something in life is to “head into the wind.”

Jesus did that the week before his crucifixion. The Scripture says, “He steadfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51, kjv).

Have you turned into a pillar of salt? Are you living with regret? Are you longing for the “good old days?” Are you taking the easy way?

This is the last Sunday of 2007, so how can we apply this story in our lives this morning? Well, think about your life: Do you have resolutions, and hopes, and desires? Have you ever started something and then stopped to look back? Have you ever made a commitment and then not followed through? Have you ever made promises and then broken them?

Have you ever solidified at less than your level of possibilities? A pillar of salt is fixated and set. A pillar of salt it not growing. A pillar of salt is not moving. A pillar of salt is not living.

That’s the symbolic message in this account. If we look back, we never arrive at our perfection.

Lot’s wife was stuck on the plains, she never reached the mountain. Are there things in your past that draw you back? Do you have uncertainty and doubts about your present course? Are there times when the temptation to give up takes over?

Have you turned into a pillar of salt? At the end of this year, let’s look forward instead of backward. Let’s move into the future with faith!

(WC1351)

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This issue of NEW PERSPECTIVES is from an unpublished manuscript © copyrighted 2007 by Miles and Maralene Wesner, Idabel, OK. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO USE THEM IN ANY WAY YOU THINK IS APPROPRIATE. The only thing we ask is that you give credit for original material in PUBLISHED works.

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