I was reading in Luke 17 and happened upon an interesting verse.
32 Remember what happened to Lot's wife.
33 People who try to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives will save them.
It's interesting that Jesus references Lot's wife here. If you know the story of Lot, he was the kinsman of Abraham and he travelled from his home with Abe. They chose to pick places to settle when they reached their destination and Lot chose to settle in an easier place...a lush valley. Abraham chose the worse of the two, but God prospered him.
Well, Lot prospered as well...you know the place he lived. It was in the region of Sodom and Gomorrah. A place of wickedness it became and God got a little tired of the nastiness. He decided to destroy the place and all in it. Abraham pleaded for the place, mainly because Lot and his family lived there and God understood. He warned Lot to leave and Lot did. He left the easy life he'd created for himself and took his family with him. The story goes that as they left, Lot's wife chose to look back and she turned into a pillar of salt.
No one really knows what was up with Lot's wife or why she did what she did, but in Luke, the reference to "remember what happened to Lot's wife" gives us some insight into a possible reason. "People who try to save their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives will save them." It is obvious that some affinity for what she was leaving drew Lot's wife back to look. It may have been a great place for her. She might have been away from the nastiness of the place and may have carved out a nice existence for herself. Doesn't mean she was evil or anything...just means she enjoyed what she had.
I think we all can get into that mode. We have a place of existence in which we are comfortable and it's natural to be drawn to that, to want to stay there. Sometimes, like Lot's wife, God directs us to a new "place"...emotionally, physically, careerwise, maturity-wise etc... Every time that God directs you to a new place, you don't automatically want to go. It might make perfect sense to you to stay, because things seem fine...but there's a danger...the danger of Lot's wife.
When we become a follower of Christ, we begin to recieve our direction from Him and not from our desires. And like Lot's wife, if we chose to hold onto the desires of the old life, we can become a pillar of salt. Salt is used in both the positive and negative in the Scriptures...because we can all be both. We are to be the salt to the Earth, in a positive way for Christ, but salt can also be harsh and distasteful. I don't think Lot's wife turned into the positive kind and neither do we when we kick against the will for God in our lives. We can become bitter and "salty"...insert adjective here...you know what I mean. It can carry over into our existence, because when salt hits the plate in abundance, it seems to get on everything...even things that we never intended it to get on...it can bitter up our whole life for us, even things that are seemingly unrelated.
The problem is that when we think we can clamp onto the thing that God doesn't have for us anymore, it ends up like the bar of soap. We end up losing our grip on it. It's like staying at the party too long after the person (God), who was the reason you enjoyed it so much, has gone.
The only way to save our life is to do the same thing we did when we became a follower of Christ...we lay it down at the feet of Christ and entrust it to Him. It's difficult to do and there's nothing easy about it, but it's the solution...or we can choose the pillar of salt. Lot's wife chose the latter and she lost it all...she never regained the life before, she lost the life she had at present, and she lost the better life that God had prepared for her that was ahead....by looking back.
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