JULY12025

There was a popular song by Boston a few years ago (50!) with the lyric: “Don’t look back a new day is breakin’ It’s been too long since I felt this way I don’t mind where I get taken The road is callin’, today is the day.” Looking back is a constant temptation for human beings. We can have a romantized memory of the ‘good old days’ which tends to forget the bad that was part of the old days. The Hebrew children succumbed to this temptation when they yearned for the “flesh pots of Egypt, the onions and leeks” (cf Numbers 11:6). Jesus warns us not to look back:  “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62). The first example of looking back in the Bible is Lot’s wife.  Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt. She looked back to what she knew, the familiar, the comfortable and thus missed out on the new thing that God was doing. She did not realize, these are the good old days.