You can’t move forward looking back.
I’m sure that has been said by many, but the most important person to say it to me was my grandmother. Therefore, it stuck.
I read about Sodom and Gomorrah today, and Lot’s wife made that phrase all the more true to me. You really can’t move forward looking back. Sometimes that one glance back is what leads to that backsliding.
Longing for that one more time when you know you shouldn’t have done it at any time, is what can be habit-forming again. One look back can always be one too many.
Lot’s wife had one look back. One more longing for what was all too familiar for some very wrong reasons. That one look cost her the ability to look ahead into her future. A future leading from sin. The result, she was turned into salt.
How many of us would be salt for our looks back?
I have to be real. I look back far too much. I look back at that relationship, that job, that time I wanted my way, etc. And I am seriously wondering, what for? When God is ahead of me why on Earth would I ever look behind me? Isn’t it crazy?
What could possibly be so important behind me that it should take away my focus on God ahead of me? Nothing. In God, there need only be forward progress. We should all be so thankful that we don’t lose our lives when we look back in longing for those very things that God is saving us from.
Genesis 19:26
But Lot’s wife looked back as she was following along behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.