02.17. CHAPTER 13 - REMEMBER LOTS WIFE
CHAPTER 13 - REMEMBER LOT’S WIFE
Outside the ruins of one of the richest cities of its time, we find a salty statue of a woman, that brings a message to women of all time. The words of the Lord, "Remember Lot’s wife" (Luke 17:32), are a warning to all of us. When Lot’s wife looked back, that was but the final act of a way of life, whereby she had ruined her family already. Her husband "was a good man who was sick of the terrible wickedness that he saw everywhere around him, (in Sodom) day after day" (2 Peter 2:7-8 -Living). But she did not feel about Sodom the way her husband felt. And that was the tragedy.
Having no fear of God herself, she could not teach her two daughters to fear God either. She was perhaps too busy socializing, to have time to spend with her two daughters as they grew up.
She was a prominent businessman’s wife, and she was proud that her daughters too had been accepted in Sodom’s society. She had no doubt overruled her husband’s objections and allowed her daughters to adopt the styles and fashions of Sodom, and finally to be married to two of Sodom’s smart young men. Thus she destroyed her daughters. A word of warning comes to us mothers from that 4000-year old pillar of salt: Spend time with your children. Remember Lot’s wife.
Lot’s wife had her treasure in her earthly goods, and so her heart was there too. Since we mothers work so much at home with earthly things, it is easy for us to place far too great a value on food, clothes, household gadgets etc., And so another warning comes to us from that pillar of salt: The things that are seen are temporal. Remember Lot’s wife.
Perhaps it was the parting from her worldly friends in Sodom that Lot’s wife found so difficult. Many sisters are ineffective for the Lord, because their best friends are their worldly relatives and neighbours, and they spend most of their time in unprofitable conversation with them. To such sisters too, the word of warning comes: Bad company will neutralise your witness for the Lord. Remember Lot’s wife.
Perhaps it is some failure in the past that could be weighing us down, or a hurt or a betrayal by some loved one that we don’t seem to be able to forget. Or it may be some sorrow or affliction that we delight in recounting to others to earn their sympathy.
Whatever it may be, looking back is always dangerous. It can halt all spiritual progress and reduce us to pillars of salt, when we could have become pillars in the church. (Yes, God’s Word tells us that even sisters can become pillars in the church if they overcome sin - Revelation 3:12).
Let us heed the warning then: Forget the past. Don’t brood over it. Remember Lot’s wife.
"Flee to the mountains, and don’t look back, or you will die" was the call of the angels to the Lot family (Genesis 19:17). This is the call that comes to us also from heaven today. Let us live on the mountain-top with the Lord, and never live in the past. And let us give up our tight hold on the things of earth that we will have to leave behind one day, in any case.