Lot's Wife

Run, my dear! Keep running!

Don’t stop to think or breathe!

Don’t wonder what it looks like, dear.

I know you want to see,

But squelch your curiosity!

We’re running for our lives!

And I tell you most emphatically

That looking is not wise!

Your home is burning up back there

A hail of fiery rain

Reduces it to just a pile

Of rubble on the plain.

My dear, I know your sister’s there

Your friends and all their wives

I’m sorry, love, but we’ve no choice.

We cannot save their lives.

I know you want to help them

I know you want to turn

I know it breaks your heart to hear

Your hometown-city burn.

Keep running now, and don’t look back

There’s nothing we can do

We tried our best to save our friends.

I know it hurts for you,

But they have made their choices, and

For them it’s far too late

We’ll look out for ourselves this time

And leave them to their fate.

I know it seems so cruel, my dear,

To leave our friends to die
It breaks my heart to flee like this,

To hear their children cry

But I hope you can see one day

We had no other choice

We heard the Lord tell us to run

And had to heed His voice.

You want to race back there and help,

But you’d just perish too!

So run with me, my own dear wife,

It’s all that we can do.

We can’t save everyone in life.

Most times it’s best to try

But sometimes, dear, the cause is lost!

And why, then, would you die?

So keep on running, darling!

And please, oh please, don’t turn!

Please, you do not have to watch

Our friends and city burn!

We cannot help, and that is that.

Aren’t we worth saving, too?

And we’re saving our two daughters!

That’s what we have to do.

But, oh, my wife! I cannot hear

Your footsteps on the ground!

What happened? Are you running still?

…Or did you turn around?

Oh, tell me that it isn’t so!

You didn’t turn or halt!

Oh, curse the day! My wife is now

A pillar made of salt!

Turned back to help her family

Or maybe just to see.

Run on, my girls. Your mother’s gone.

It’s now just you and me.

~ © Andrea Grace

     When the morning dawned, the angels urged Lot to hurry, saying, "Arise! Take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be consumed in the punishment of the city!"

     And while he lingered, the men took hold of his hand, his wife's hand, and the hands of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful to him, and they brought him out and set him outside the city. So it came to pass, when they had brought them outside that he said,

     "Escape for your life! Do not look behind you nor stay anywhere on the plain. Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed!"

     ... But his wife looked back behind them, and she became a pillar of salt.

      ~ Genesis 19: 15-17, 19