If You Keep Looking Back You Will Turn to Stone

As soon as they had been brought outside, Lot was told: "Flee for your life! Don't look back or stop anywhere on the Plain… Hurry, escape to Zoar… But Lot's wife looked back and she was turned into a pillar of salt.
Genesis 19

Sometimes we spend our lives looking back over our shoulders. We have regrets and we allow them to haunt us. If we put too much energy into looking back, we allow the past to swallow up our present and we, like Lot’s wife, turn into salt or stone. We stop living. Our lives become arrested by past disappointments, by the “should haves” or the “what ifs.” 

There’s never any sense in looking back to the past with regret. The only positive reason to look back is to regain some wisdom so we can put it to good use in the present. If we get stuck in the past, we will have greater regrets down the road. We will regret all of the present days we are wasting moaning over a past we can’t change; and we may eventually end up completely stuck in yesterday and irreversibly turned to stone.

Life moves forward and we must move forward with it. God has created a natural flow to every day of every year. God’s timeframe flows like a mighty river. We need to keep our eyes focused ahead as we swim through what is (the present) toward what will be (the future). If we start swimming backwards against God’s tide, we will find ourselves facing great difficulties and possibly even drowning in our attempts to change the unchangeable and forever gone past.

If your heart is carrying the burdens of regret about past mistakes, take time to feel your hurt, to grieve your sense of failure or loss, and then let go. Ask God for the graces to move forward in the swim of life. God has a bright future planned for each of us, but we have to be looking forward to it in order for our souls to shine!

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 4, 2011 at 5:56 AM

    Dear Fr. Charlie,

    Thank you for sharing your wisdom, kindness, and gentleness with ALL! Today, Sunday, December 4, 2011, I needed to read this meditation. Thank you for ALL that you do on behalf of HIS church, and for HIS Co-Dependent Little Ones;)

    Patricia
    beloved daughter of God

    ReplyDelete

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