devotional post #2021

Luke 17:28-31

Luk 17:28 In the same way, just as it was in the days of Lot, people were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building;
Luk 17:29 but on the day Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from the sky and destroyed them all.
Luk 17:30 It will be the same on the day the Son of Man is revealed.
Luk 17:31 On that day, anyone who is on the roof, with his property in the house, must not come down to take them away, and in the same way the person in the field must not turn back.

time to stay steady

Lot’s wife appears in Jesus’ teaching as more than a historical footnote; she becomes a living warning. She had been given a clear command: flee the city, do not look back, do not cling to what God is leaving behind. Yet in the moment of crisis, her heart turned toward Sodom. Her backward glance revealed more than curiosity. It exposed attachment. She could not fully release the life she was being rescued from, and in that moment she was frozen—literally and spiritually—caught between deliverance and desire.

Jesus brings her story into his teaching about his return because the same danger remains for his disciples. He had already told them that there would be a long stretch of waiting before his second coming. During that time, life would continue with its ordinary rhythms—work, relationships, responsibilities, joys, and sorrows. In the midst of all that normalcy, the temptation would be to settle in, to anchor themselves to the comforts and securities of this world, to let their hearts drift toward the very things they had once been rescued from.

So Jesus warns them: do not look back. Do not let your affections become entangled with the world in such a way that his return feels like an interruption rather than a homecoming. When the sky splits open and the Son of Man appears, the only ones ready to welcome him will be those whose hearts have remained steady, whose loyalties have not shifted, whose hope has not been diluted by lesser loves.

Lot’s wife teaches us that spiritual danger does not always come in dramatic rebellion. Sometimes it comes in a single glance—an inward turning of the heart toward what God has called us to leave behind. Jesus calls his disciples to a long obedience, a sustained commitment, a posture of readiness that endures through the years of waiting. Faithfulness is not proven in a moment but in a lifetime of choosing him again and again.

Her story is sobering, but it is also clarifying. It reminds us that the Christian life is not merely about fleeing judgment but about moving toward the One who saves. Our eyes belong on him, not on the world we have left.

LORD, show us how to remain unswervingly committed to you.