Day 15 - salt

  But Lot’s wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt. Gen 19: 26  

OK, so a pillar of salt isnt technically a stone, but for the purposes of this blog it is.

When I was in the midst of depression a few years back I found myself unable to live in the present and do today well.  I was constantly either looking back to my past and berating myself for the decisions I'd made - second guessing the outcomes that different choices might have effected- or I was looking forward to an impossible-to-guess future and stressing about what it might look like and how I would cope with it.  It was a miserable place to be. I only really started to see it for what it was when I started taking medication which straightened me out.  I gradually came back to 'today' in my head.   

Lot's wife is usually condemned for her sin in harking back to what she had been told to leave.  For not trusting God and disobeying His express command not to watch the destruction which had been promised.  All of which are perfectly reasonable readings of the text.  But I see her in a slightly different way.

She was petrified.  Literally.  

We use that word to mean scared to death - terrified. But it actually means ' turned to stone'

I wonder if Lot's wife was scared. Scared to leave everything she knew. People she loved. Her home. Scared of what was going to happen to those who hadn't been persuaded to come.  Scared of the unknown in front of her and the threatened destruction behind her. I dont blame her for being scared. I'd have been terrified.  Angels had visited, a mob had turned up at the door baying for blood. Her husband had offered up her daughters as sacrifices to the crowd. And now here she is running for her life.  She wasn't having a good day.

I know what it feels like to be turned to stone. Maybe you do too.  Stuck. Unable to move forward. Perpetually looking back.  The trouble is, once you have been turned to stone its hard to 'un-petrify' yourself.  But I'm reminded of a verse in Jeremiah 23;29 

Is not My word like fire,” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer that smashes a rock?”  

Asking Jesus to apply His word like a hammer in our lives might just be the thing that gets us free from our rock enclosures. It's not comfortable, being smashed with a hammer. Its not Jesus being meek and mild. Its brutal. But it might just be lifesaving

Jesus also references the story of Lot's wife in Luke 17 when talking about His second coming. That is not going to be a time for being stuck in the past, looking behind us to see who else is coming. Worrying about those left behind.  Which seems harsh. And difficult.  Nobody knows the whens and hows and wheres of Jesus's return but maybe we all need to be asking that when it happens we will be ready, obedient, focused on Him and nobody else and able to leave everyone and everything behind us instantly.  That means our spouses, our kids, our parents, our friends. Everyone.  That day it will just be Jesus. Only Jesus.  Are you ready?

Im not sure I am



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