Don't look back

And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.– Genesis 19.17, 26

Okay, I admit that looking back is a lot like lingering, but still think it worthy of consideration. They are two different steps.  One is waiting an dallying with sin at the moment, the other is looking back at the ‘what ifs and the ‘if onlies’ of our past or dwelling in the things that we should long ago have laid aside.

The angels warned Lot and his family not to look back, but his wife did and was turned into a pillar of salt.

While I doubt any of us will be turned to salt for looking back our own looking back can be just as paralysing as being that pillar of salt. We can be so caught up in looking backward that there is no way we can possibly move forward.

The great baseball pitcher is quoted as saying ‘don’t look back, something might me catching up to you.’

Even Peter, Paul wrote ‘forgetting those things which are behind and pressing on the mark…’

We can’ afford to think back to where we would be or might have been if we had only made this or that decision. We can’t afford to dwell on our past victories or our past mistakes. We can’t afford do anything but keep on keeping on. We can’t do anything about the past but learn from it and move on. Don’t be dragged down or built up by the past.

Don’t look back. Let’s keep our eyes on Christ and keep running the race.