“Behold now, thy servant hath found grace in thy sight, and thou hast magnified thy mercy, which thou hast shewed unto me in saving my life; and I cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me, and I die:” (Ge 19:19 AV)
This is Lot’s request upon hearing he was to flee to the mountains so God could destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Rather than go to the mountains, Lot suggested another city. A very small city. God gave him liberty to do so, but LOT ended in the mountains anyway. Lot’s fear of the mountains is not without merit. Many years ago, before he had a family and children, he was kidnapped by five kings and taken to these same mountains. He was looking at the end of his life. Abraham led and empowered by God, allied with five other kings. He invaded the base camp of Lot’s captors rescuing Lot from an untimely end. So, when the LORD told Lot to flee to the mountains, he had flashbacks of that incident in his life. He was fearful of the mountains because of the cruelty and threat of death that he faced there. He felt cities offered him better safety. That turned out not to be true either. Lot had to trust God. He could not allow the scars of the past to affect his present faith. History may not repeat itself. It could be that if he trusts the LORD, then things will turn out just fine.
We see this most often in relationships. Someone suffers great loss and they have a hard time committing to another one. If it happens more than once, chances grow even greater that the single person will remain single. We find that with Lisa’s cancer, we also suffer from the same dilemma. Every CT or PET scan brings us back to the first one. There is a part of us that expects another shoe to drop. We anxiously await the news that we think is coming when in reality, it is not coming. When we suffer a traumatic experience, it is hard to get used to the fact it may never happen again. It is like getting punched in the face. Every time we see the bully who did that, we are on our guard and any move whatsoever sees us flinching in anticipation of another blow. It is natural for us to think this way. In most cases, it might even be the wisest thing to do. This helps us to protect ourselves against the blow that is coming. We can deal with the pain and anxiety a bit better. The problem is, if we always expect the worst, then we can never experience the best. At some point, we have to trust the LORD.
Lot and his daughters were with child because, in part, the fear and anxiety of Lot transferred to his daughters. One night, the two girls devised a plan to get their father drunk and then sleep with him. They feared that God would judge all the cities and there would be no men to betroth them, marry them, and raise children to their father’s name. So the first night saw one of the daughters sleep with her father and the other followed the second night. All this happened because Lot flinched. He did go to the mountains. But he did so out of fear and not out of trust. This flinching at the word of the LORD because of past trauma will affect more than Self. It will affect all those who follow. At some point, we have to leave the past in the past. At some point, we have to believe in the grace and goodness of the LORD. At some point, we have to stop fearing shadows of what might be and trust in the God who is. Lot failed to do that. He failed to allow himself to heal and go on. He lived in fear. Fear that the past would repeat itself. This led to some serious mistakes and trouble for those who would come from his loins. Leave the past in the past and trust God for the present and future.
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