“Remember Lot’s wife.” That is one command of Jesus I’ve never had a hard time with. Genesis 19 relates one of those episodes that should be included in a book called Bible Stories You Can’t Forget No Matter How Hard You Try.
This woman, known to us only by her husband’s name, flees for her life. Actually, she and her family are forced to leave Sodom when two mysterious visitors take them by the hands and lead them outside the city wall. They save her from death by brimstone. They say, Keep running, don’t look back; and then they disappear.
As I always had it pictured, in a flash, Lot’s wife froze into a womanly statue of salt that stood for centuries, until sandy wind storms wore away her features, then her torso. Her pillar, I knew, eventually, mysteriously poisoned what is now called the Dead Sea.
My friend Camilla says I had it all wrong. Lot’s wife instantly melted—like the Wicked Witch of the West-dwindling smaller and smaller until all that was left of her was a grain of salt the size of one that would spill from a shaker.
Whatever the circumstances, Lot’s wife lost her chance, and for several years I have wondered just what her thoughts were as she made that fatal turn.
She had left behind neighbors—an evil crowd, but neighbors nonetheless—mothers who had raised children alongside her own, young men who were betrothed to her daughters, shopkeepers who knew her by name. Did she hear their screams and look back in horrified disbelief that for them there was no way out?
She had left behind a house that was a home to her—a refuge from the unspeakable goings-on occurring just outside the door—and filled with mementos that told a family’s story. Did she wish she had been able to slip a treasure or two under her arm before she’d rushed away to safety? Did the familiar, with all its imperfections, suddenly seem too difficult to abandon? And the promise of salvation—did it seem too distant and too hard to grasp?
“Remember Lot’s wife.” Luke drops those words of Jesus in the middle of a paragraph describing the day of Jesus’ eventual return to Earth. The short verse is sandwiched between others, more familiar and more obviously eschatological: “On that day no one … in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left” (Luke 17:31–34, NIV).
Imaginings of that future day have set up permanent camp in my mind. Childhood sermons found their way into childhood nightmares of abandonment: Jesus had come and I’d been left behind. Songs I sang with a college evangelistic team bounced off back walls of church halls, echoing over and over: “I wish we’d all been ready.” I stayed away from church the evening they showed a color preview of things to come, as if my imagination wasn’t vivid enough: Thief in the Night.
Surely I wasn’t alone in the way I had always pictured Jesus’ return: Like a hawk for a mouse, he would swoop down and carry away his church, whose fate was to parallel wedded bliss rather than ravaged beast. His choice—you, you, not you—would depend on a person’s past choices. But this faster-than-a-blink second was to be his moment of decision; yours and mine would have come and gone.
Or was my scenario wrong? What about Lot’s wife? Where does that old story fit in?
When I reread Genesis 19 I see a wrinkle in the scene that will someday unfold: Yes, the Lord himself will take his people out of a doomed land. But at that late date, might our own hearts betray us? Will we still be able to choose: Go or stay? Run on ahead or linger? Loosen our grips or hold on to the familiar? Fix our gaze on the promised salvation or turn back to steal one last look …?
“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34, NIV).
Evelyn Bence is a free-lance writer and editor living in Arlington, Virginia. Her books include the coauthored Growing Up Born Again (Revell, 1987), written with Patricia Klein, Jane Campbell, Laura Pearson, and Dave Wimbish.
