02/04/2025
I am thinking about Lot’s wife, the woman whose name we will never get to know but whose singular act of disobedience has been recounted in history for centuries.
What kind of woman she was, what she enjoyed, the kind of mother she was, whether she liked soft music or loud laughter, whether she was funny, quiet, gentle, or firm. We will never know.
But judgment has been made about her entire being by millions of people over the years. Millions of people who, even right now, are repeating the same thing she did one way or another.
Lot’s wife was told by the Angel of God to leave S***m and never look back. But after running a distance, she turned, and in that moment, she became a pillar of salt, frozen in time.
It is easy to judge her. But I have a feeling that Lot’s wife didn’t look back just because she could. She had built her entire life in S***m, and it is understandable that she would long for the things she was leaving behind.
Yes, S***m was notorious for certain lifestyles that enraged God, but it was still home. A place of familiarity. Maybe she looked back because everything she had ever known was in S***m. Her friendships. Her routines. Her favourite corner of the market. The familiar sounds of her mornings. Her comfort. Even if destruction was inevitable, she may have found it difficult to detach emotionally.
We read her story and use it as a warning about the consequences of disobedience. But are we different from her?
God calls us to new seasons, new opportunities, new mindsets, but many of us are frozen in transition. We mourn what we prayed for God to deliver us from.
Like Lot’s wife, we look back at toxic relationships, destructive habits, and mindsets that do nothing but trap us, simply because they were familiar.
We replay memories with people who dishonoured us. We revisit the pain, re-read the old chats, stalk the social media pages, or hold onto the idea of ‘what could’ve been’ if we had stayed.
We say we’ve forgiven ourselves, but keep replaying the same guilt-ridden moments in our minds.
Familiar pain still has a strange kind of comfort sometimes, does it not?
But beyond nostalgia, looking back is a form of resistance to transformation.
Read that again.
It is our mind’s desperate attempt to hold onto what is slipping away. And even though longing for the past is human, staying tied to it when God is calling you forward is a dangerous thing.
God says, ‘Move forward’, but we hesitate. He says, ‘Let go’, but we hold on. He says, ‘Trust me’, but we keep looking over our shoulders, and second-guessing whether leaving was the right thing to do.
We underestimate the cost of looking back.
It has grave consequences. It keeps you stuck, not physically frozen in time, but stuck entally, emotionally, spiritually. It keeps us stuck in places you were never meant to remain and robs us of the beautiful future that is ahead.
Lot’s wife was already on the path to salvation, but one look behind cost her everything.
She became a monument to her own hesitation!
And we are doing the same thing!
We do the same thing when we refuse to detach from the past. When we overanalyse the ‘what ifs’ instead of stepping into the ‘what’s next’. When we keep revisiting what God already closed, instead of moving towards what He has prepared.
If there is any lesson that you should learn from Lot’s wife, it is this: Stop romanticising your own S***m.
Stop romanticising the relationship you cried through every night.
Stop romanticising the old version of you that God is trying to grow you out of.
Stop glorifying that job that drained you, that friendship that broke you, that season God clearly rescued you from.
Some doors are meant to close permanently. Stop opening them.
Some memories are better left alone.
Some chapters are not meant to be re-read.
Some places are not meant to be revisited.
If the past is behind you, LEAVE. IT. THERE.
There is nothing behind you that is worth what God has placed ahead of you.
S***m is on fire. Keep moving.
Don’t look back.
STOP LOOKING BACK!
Otherwise, you risk turning into your own version of a pillar of salt.
📄 Written by Chinaza Favour
