Don't Look Back

Recently, I was thinking back to decisions I've made. Good ones. Bad ones. All of them got me to where I am today. And suddenly I was reminded that looking back holds you up. I thought of the story of Lot's wife in Genesis 19. Two verses spoke directly to what I was thinking about:

v.17, 26 Don't look back and don't stop anywhere on the plain! Flee to the
mountains or you will be swept away. But Lot's wife looked back and she became a
pillar of salt.

You can't move forward when you're looking back. Can you imagine driving forward down the street in a straight line while looking out the back window? It just wouldn't happen. You'd end up in the ditch for certain. Even if you were just looking in your side mirror instead of looking ahead you would end up in trouble. "Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear." You could get sucked into regret, despair, or even pride.

I've been thinking about how we decided to move to Bismarck instead of Dickinson. Thinking about the time I lost with Adam when I could have been playing with him instead of cleaning. I've reflected on screwed-up relationships with estranged relatives. And of course, last week's election has been on my mind as well as Bush's presidency. The question that kept coming to my mind: "how did we get here?"

There's a difference between learning from history and living for it. We have to learn from our good decisions and learn from the bad ones. We can't continue to pat ourselves on the back for doing a good job or beat ourselves up for screwing up. Because if you're living for the past, you're looking back and that means you're stuck.

But, more there's more to it than that. Lot's wife looked back onto Sodom & Gomorrah, longingly we presume, and she turned to salt. A pillar of salt. A pillar is immovable. Salt scatters. So looking back leaves us stuck but it also scatters us. Our goals, our future, our hope, everything ends up scattered. I dont know about you, but I hate when I feel scattered or out of focus. It renders me useless. This makes me think of two other verses:

Jeremiah 13:24
I will scatter you like chaff driven by the desert wind.

James 1:6
But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

A few months ago, my sister stopped by and as we stood in my driveway, a big wind came up and blew the paperwork on the seat of her car right out into the yard. They scattered. They were blown and tossed. What a mess and a total hassle to retrieve them all.She was exhausted after she collected all the papers. And it was stressful. I don't know about you but I don't need any additional stress or exhaustion in my life.

So looking back is useless. Yes it's good to learn from history. Good to reminisce. But anything more than that turns us into an immovable statue of dust. No thanks.