Remember Lot's Wife
by Christine Caine
None of us will ever forget 2020, will we? In addition to moving through a global pandemic, and watching it continue into 2021, we experienced natural disasters on most every continent—hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, drought and flooding. The ground warmed enough in the mid-Atlantic region for billions of Cicadas to emerge—after 17 years of being underground. It was reminiscent of a plague of biblical proportions. We saw protests and riots in major cities in more than 60 countries, drawing attention to racial injustice. It was easy to understand why some people wanted to throw their hands up in the air and ask, “What’s next?” because it did feel like one thing after another just kept happening. When people questioned if it was the end of the world, it was—even though we’re all still here—because it was the end of the world as we once knew it.
Like most everyone, I was tempted to look back. To want to go back. To 2019. Or any year of our lives before 2020. To go back to normal, whatever our normal was. To forget all the new normal that we were all desperately trying to create. Yet, no matter how much I longed to go back to normal, there was no going back. That world as we knew it was finished, and God was beckoning me, along with everyone else, to move forward, to lay hold of his purpose and promises in the future.
Sorting through the tension of not looking back and trying to move forward, I began reminding myself that while the world had changed, God had not. He was the same as he’d always been, and I could depend on him to guide me forward.
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During that same season of doing my best to not look back and to keep moving forward, I was reminded of a woman in the Bible who looked back when she wasn’t supposed to, and it didn’t go well for her. Do you remember Lot’s wife? She was the woman running for her life with her family in Genesis 19. As they ran, destruction was raining down on their hometown of Sodom, and despite being told not to look back by an angel who was holding her hand, she turned and looked back. Scripture tells us, “But Lot’s wife looked back and became a pillar of salt."
What makes Lot’s wife especially significant is that Jesus said for us to remember her. In the middle of an eschatological discourse in the New Testament, Jesus dropped in three words “Remember Lot’s wife.”
If you’ve ever read Luke 17, it’s all too easy to miss these three words. I know because I did for years. I read them, of course, but that’s all. I flew past them. But Jesus never wastes a word, let alone three, so there must be some significance to remembering Lot’s wife. These three words began to show me the importance of not looking back. Of always moving forward. Even in the midst of a pandemic or a war or something far more normal. They became words I couldn’t forget and words that showed me the way forward.
“Remember Lot’s wife.”
For 30 plus years now, I’ve been going to women’s conferences, and I don’t remember ever hearing a message on Lot’s wife, nor do I ever remember teaching one. And yet, of the possible 170 women mentioned in Scripture, she is the only one that Jesus tells us to remember. Why her? Why not Eve, Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Ruth, Rahab, Esther, Elizabeth, or even Mary, his own mother? Of all the women Jesus could have told us to remember, he mentioned only one, "Lot’s wife.” This is astonishing to me. Why her? There had to be a reason.
She Lingered
As I began to study her life, I noted something very important. This woman was told one thing: “Don’t look back,” and the one thing she was told not to do is the one thing she did. Furthermore, I found that understanding how she looked back quite possibly held a clue as to why she looked back: “But Lot’s wife, from behind him, [foolishly, longingly] looked [back toward Sodom in an act of disobedience], and she became a pillar of salt.”
She looked back longingly…in an act of disobedience. I don’t want to be harsh about Lot’s wife. We all make mistakes, and we all disobey, and to think she looked back longingly causes me to feel for her. Here she was living her life as usual and suddenly she’s told to pack up and run for her life. All the while an angel is holding her hand and guiding her.
I have found that if we linger too long where we’re not supposed to be, we’ll start longing for what we are supposed to no longer be lingering in. When we linger, we hesitate. The literal meaning of linger is “to be slow in parting. To remain in existence although waning in strength. It’s to procrastinate.” And it includes one more eerily accurate depiction: “To remain alive although gradually dying.” Lot’s wife might not have had any idea that looking back would cause her death, but it did, didn’t it?
Are you longing for something that once was? That is no more? That can never be again?
Are you lingering there in that place where you should no longer be lingering?
Are you lingering in a place and longing for what was, all the while tolerating what is, all in hopes that if you linger long enough, you might get back what God told you to leave?
When Lot’s wife longed and lingered, she stopped and looked back toward Sodom in an act of disobedience. Then, she became calcified and stuck, frozen in time, paralyzed for eternity as a pillar of salt. I’m Greek, and because I was raised to salt food generously, I love salt. But I don’t want to get stuck and turn into a pillar of salt. I imagine you don’t either. But in a sense, I find that getting stuck like she did is so easy to do.
We can get stuck in our emotions,
our thoughts,
our attitudes,
our opinions,
our possessions,
our plans,
our desires,
our habits,
our comfort,
our pain,
our wounds,
our relationships,
our past,
our present,
or even our future hopes.
There are a myriad of ways and places we can get stuck, and it’s not always easy to move on when God beckons us forward, especially when things are safe, comfortable, and just the way we like it. Equally, it is often difficult to move on when we have experienced deep trauma, pain, or suffering, and feel utterly hopeless and helpless. Moving on is something we know we should do, what we often want to do, and at times what we actually refuse to do, but it remains something God eagerly wants for us. Wherever you may be on this continuum, it is my prayer that you will be able to identify places where you are prone to be stuck, or maybe are stuck, and that you will be infused with the strength of the Holy Spirit to take the next step to getting unstuck—and it all starts with remembering Lot’s wife.
CHRISTINE CAINE
Adapted from Don’t Look Back, Getting Unstuck and Moving Forward with Passion and Purpose by Christine Caine. Copyright © 2023 by Christine Caine. Reprinted with permission of Thomas Nelson Publishing. All rights reserved.
