Tuesday of Week 13 Year 1

If God were to ask you to do something, would you do it? Or would you find ways and means to try and avoid doing what God wants of you? Some of us say that we will do what God wants us to, but some may not be saying so wholeheartedly. Are we willing to do God's will and have complete trust in Him, or have some of us doubted God and tried to look back or go back to our previous ways?

In today's reading, the angels urged Lot: "Come, take your wife and these two daughters of yours, or you will be overwhelmed in the punishment of the town... Run for your life. Neither look behind you nor stop anywhere on the plain. Make for the hills if you would not be overwhelmed." Lot managed to convince the angels to allow his family and he to escape to a town called Zoar. However, "the wife of Lot looked back, and was turned into a pillar of salt." Why did she do so? The reading does not tell us specifically. Perhaps Lot's wife had become too attached to her old life, and she looked back in regret for what she was losing. Perhaps she was curious and wanted to see whether everything would be totally destroyed. But whatever the reason may be, she had disobeyed God and suffered the consequences. As Jesus cautions us: "It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulphur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it." (Luke 17:28-33).

What about us? When we were baptised, we were supposed to have died to our old selves and put on a new self, becoming children of God and maintaining a good relationship with Him. But some of us, perhaps, may have been tempted to "look back" or doubted whether God would really provide for us. Let us not be fooled into thinking that God does not care for us or has abandoned us. Rather, let us continue to trust Him, knowing that He knows what is best for us and will provide for us according to His time and for His glory.