Savorless Pillars of Salt

Remember Lot's wife. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.  Luke 17: 32-33

I often am overwhelmed by the kindness and grace of God.  His tenderness towards His wandering sheep.  And then I sometimes forget how serious Jesus is about compromise with the world. There is no place in any of his teaching for partial or halfhearted obedience.   You cannot serve mammon and God both.  The man plowing the field is warned about looking back.  We are told not to measure our field or bury our dead. Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay His head.  He says, “If you do not forsake all that you have, you cannot be my disciple.”  And then there is His message to lukewarm Laodicean church: “I will vomit you out of my mouth.”

We begin with the crisp black and white of the ten commandments.  Do not steal.  Do not lie.  Do not murder.  Do not commit adultery.  Nothing subtle about these laws that hold together both the fabric of our society and the order and sense of our lives. These are the concrete learner laws.  The color-inside-the-lines guidelines to give us a good and healthy life.  Who would step into chains of sin once the Son has set us free? The rich young ruler answered simply enough, “These I have kept from my childhood.”

And then there is the overarching truths, the higher order thinking: Love the LORD your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your might, and Love your neighbor as yourself.  These are the ones that must be worked out in the shop of daily living.  Pounding them out, shaping them, practicing day after day.  

That is the story of Lot’s wife.  glance by glance she eased back into the comfortable world of Sodom and became entangled.  It is not at all about what we know: she knew the God of Abraham.  She probably obeyed the rules.  She was clearly warned by the angels.  But deep within, she was torn.  She hesitated and all was lost.  

I was talking to Frederic yesterday about the distractions.  And Brother Lawrence and the Practice of the Presence of God.  Developing the habit of full out obedience to the gentle prodding of the Holy Spirit.  No time for discussion or wavering.  Act.  Immediately.  And I will mess up and I will waver, but then I must pick myself up, brush off the dust and set off again, training my ear for that still small voice.  Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.