He looked out across the plain toward Sodom and Gomorrah and watched as columns of smoke rose from the cities like smoke from a furnace. But God had listened to Abraham’s request and kept Lot safe, removing him from the disaster that engulfed the cities on the plain. (Genesis 19:28-30)Imagine being the only good man in your whole city. Everybody is bad. Everybody has turned from God. Everybody is evil and sinful and full of debauchery.
It seemed like such a good place when you first came. Abraham, your uncle, gave you the choice of where to go and your chose Sodom. It was a beautiful place, a place you could make a home in.
You stayed because you thought that you might make some difference. Maybe some day you could break through the barriers and bring the knowledge of God.
But you know now that you never will. And worse of all, you see your family corrupted by the ever-present evil, your daughters have married men that are no good and are rapidly becoming that way themselves. Your influence on them, while still strong, is waning. Even your wife is succumbing to the pervasive evil.
You don’t know what to do. You are at an impasse. On the one hand, Sodom is your home. Everything you have is here. On the other hand, it has ceased to be your home. Nothing you are is in common with what they are.
Then two men come to your door and you invite them in, just as you were taught to do. The men of the city find out they are here and want them to come out so they can destroy them with their perversions. You even find yourself offering your daughters to them, much to your shame, but for whatever reason, they want the two men.
What do you do? You can leave everything behind. All you have worked for and achieved you can just leave. Or you can stay and die with these people you don’t even like, these people you have grown to loathe.
The two visitors, men you are beginning to suspect are more than just men, pull you in just in time before the men of Sodom hurt you and break into your home. The men of Sodom are blinded and the two men tell you to leave. Take nothing with you except your wife and two daughters and leave the city. Don’t even look back. Just go.
You run. And your daughters and wife protest but they run with you. The Lord agrees that you can go to a small village nearby, but when you reach it, your wife looks back and turns into a pillar of salt.
In grief you stay there with your daughters. They are angry at leaving all their friends and their husbands and you are in grief over not only the loss of your home, but your wife.
And then to top it all off, your daughters, who are convinced that they are some of the few people left in the world decide to get you drunk and get pregnant by you.
Yet you retain your trust in God. All you know and love is gone, but you remain faithful to God.
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