As the June rains tumble in silver slivers that soak the leafy landscape of the English summer, and many hands heave the covers over Wimbledon tennis courts, it is time to contemplate life’s mysteries – at least until play resumes. Rainbows span the heavens, ephemeral and fleeting, as sun and shower meet in dazzling display. Their short lives echo the insights for which we grasp in our mental meanderings. Even as our minds reach out to clutch the emerging truth, so it dissolves into a phantom. Real life resumes. “Henman leads two sets to one, fourth set…” burbles the man on TV.
Jimi Hendrix understood the effect a rainy day has on the mind. “Rainy day, dream away…Lay back and dream on a rainy day!” Of course, narcotics do strange things but who needs them when you can have rain-induced torpor? It’s at times like that when one can contemplate those niggling little things in the Bible. For instance, was Lot’s wife really turned into a pillar of salt? Was it genuine salt? Why did she look back? Had she forgotten to pack lipstick and a spare pair of stockings? Was she so caught up in the drama of the city’s disaster, and so busy contemplating the fact that Sodom is an anagram of moods and dooms, that she tarried too long in its hot embrace? Does it matter? Are Spurs going to win the championship next season?
Sorry – I got rather sidelined there. That’s the problem with reveries and contemplation in general: you start in one direction and end up somewhere else. This is especially true when trying to grasp the significance of difficult or obscure things in the Bible. Quite often we deliberately change tack to avoid them. You will have noticed that commentaries and preachers will invariably comment on everything in a passage except the difficult or enigmatic verse – the one you really want to know about. The Study Bible and Life Application Bible are prime examples of such institutionalised avoidance.
Paul says in 2 Tim. 3:16-17, “All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching rebuking, correcting and training so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (my emphasis). The implication of what Paul says is that we should seek to wrestle in thought with even the difficult bits, because God put them there for our instruction. It is not certain that we will come to a definitive answer as to meaning but we can certainly improve our focus on the issues involved. To some extent, I think the hard verses are there to keep the Christian involved in Bible study. What good would it be if we learnt all the theology in a couple of years and so put the good book away? There always needs to be a puzzle to challenge and stimulate us, rather in the same way as Fermat’s Theorum has challenged mathematicians. The tough verses are the Bible’s cryptic crosswords.
Although we are considering a minor clue rather than
a really tricky one, there is certainly something to be learned from the
story of Lot’s wife. But we need to look at the context. The pillar of
salt is the visual advert to attract us to the matter in the first place.
The whole family are reluctant to leave Sodom, just as the person on the
verge of conversion is reluctant to leave the ways of the world behind.
The two angels have to grasp the hesitating Lots by the hand and pull them
away! How hard it is to leave your old home as the possessions that make
up your life are consumed by flames. The problem is not that Mrs. Lot looked
back with her eyes. It was her heart that looked back, failing to
respond to God’s call of grace. And so she suffers the punishment of all
who do not heed the gospel. Abraham, watching the burning of Sodom some
way off, is not affected by looking at the city, so it is not the physical
act of looking at it that condemns.
Physically, it is likely that Lot’s wife straggled
in her hesitation and got caught in the periphery of the destruction. You
can see the bodies of people captured ‘in freeze frame’ in the burning
destruction of Pompeii that have remained in tact and which have taken
on a white, salty appearance. Surely this is what happened to Lot’s wife.
The great sadness of the episode is that the lady so nearly made it! As for Lot’s two future sons-in-law, they laughed at Lot and thought he was joking about the coming judgement. You see, non-believers cannot envisage that today the Lord may come and the end Judgement be upon us. They hear the Bible’s warnings of God’s wrath… and laugh, making fun of the Christian messenger. “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” says the psalmist. The fate of Sodom is the fate of the world. If the Lord calls you out of the world to be part of his chosen family, then run for your lives, grateful for the streams of living water that will quench the flames of judgement.
“So after a sizzling display of tennis, the winner salutes the crowd... and there he goes, off for a refreshing and well-deserved shower just as the rain begins to fall once again on centre court, which is crowned by a beautiful rainbow…” [Click]