"Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it...it is very small, isn't it? Then my life will be spared" (Genesis 19:20). Poor Lot still hadn't learned his lesson about the city. Above all, he hadn't learned about faith. Here he was offered an appointed mountain of refuge, but he complained that it was too far off and he wouldn't make it. He wanted to take the convenient way out; Lot always seemed concerned about his comfort. Nothing is noted here about any concern for those left behind. Lot is beginning to sound like the rest of us! We all ask at some time for a safer and more expedient refuge. After all, who wants to leave all behind to head up to a lonely mountaintop, even when we know the God of mercy is there? There is much advantage and abundance in the city, so who of us wants to flee to the unfamiliar? But sometimes God requires us to head out and up, and quickly. A blaze of anguish consumes the margins and rushes us into the nucleus; "Flee for your lives! Don't look back and don't stop anywhere on the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!" (Genesis 19:17). But our so-human nature heads for a Zoar. We are reluctant to give all and to accept all; to remember that all things work together for good. God wants us to leave our molehills of doubts--our secret reservations about His love and commitment--and ascend to the holy mountain of His certainty. But we beg, as did Lot, what can be so wrong about a Zoar? Perhaps nothing, but it is a compromise instead of a promise; another stopping-off place of temptation that we have chosen instead of our Father who knows better what is best for us. It is a place to give birth to our Moabs and Ammonites, more sinful beginnings. |
