Starting Over

The angels were explicit: "Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain!" Lot and his family were being evacuated from a city that was about to be destroyed. The instruction couldn't have been clearer.

Lot's wife looked back. And she became a pillar of salt.

Jesus referenced this moment when teaching about the end times: "Remember Lot's wife." It's the shortest sermon illustration in the Gospels. Just three words. But the content is vast: when God says go forward, turning back toward what he has told you to leave is not nostalgia — it is defiance.

This is not the story of a woman who was casually curious. It is the story of a heart that was still in the city it was leaving. The body was moving forward; the heart had not let go. And that divided allegiance — that half-departure — is what God is warning against when he says "do not dwell on the past."

What we mourn we may also be choosing. Starting over requires a real goodbye.

The context of Isaiah 43 is a people in exile. Israel had lost the land, lost the temple, lost the political structures that had defined their identity. Everything was gone. And God spoke into that — not with consolation but with declaration.

"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine." He wasn't explaining the exile. He wasn't apologizing for it. He was naming what would come next: a new thing, a way in the wilderness, streams in the wasteland.

The promise was not that the exile would be undone — that Egypt would be restored, that the old glory would be rebuilt. It was that something entirely new was coming that would be even more wonderful than the original exodus: "Forget the former things... see, I am doing a new thing."

Israel was being asked to let go of its best story so that God could write a better one. Starting over meant releasing even the miracle they had been living off of — and trusting that what God had ahead was more than what he had behind.

Elisha's servant woke up to find the city surrounded by enemy horses and chariots. He panicked: "Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?" The situation was objectively terrifying. But Elisha's response was calm: "Don't be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them."

And then he prayed: "Open his eyes, LORD, so that he may see." And God opened the servant's eyes — and he saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. The army had been there the whole time. The servant simply couldn't see it.

Starting over seasons are often filled with what the servant felt: surrounded, outnumbered, the resources clearly inadequate. But Isaiah's question — "do you not perceive it?" — is Elisha's prayer for our eyes: LORD, open them. What you are doing is already in motion. Help us see it.

The new thing was there before the question was asked. The question is whether our perception can expand to take it in.