Lot's Lot In Life

My first college roommate was named Lindsay.  She was tiny, athletic, artistic, had a ton of friends, and was an identical twin.  She was also funny.  One day, while hanging out in our room in Phillips Hall, her sister took a wipe off marker and wrote on the full length mirror that was on the back of our door, "I like to get naked and poop."  It was just good, harmless fun all the time with them because they were, above all, Christians.  I was not at the time and they drove me crazy. 

In 1998 the internet was still relatively new.  I lost my internet virginity in that room in Phillips Hall by signing up for my first ever email account.  Lindsay was much  more worldly than me, and had been online long enough to have an assortment of AOL messenger friends.  She would chat with them at all hours.   I would be laying in bed at 2am and hear the thunder of her fingers on the keys: "dadadadadada."  Followed by the cheerful AOL, "Ding-dong!"  And then she would giggle at the screen, her face glowing white in the otherwise darkness of the room.  At 2-freaking-am!!  It was all I could do to keep myself from pressing my pillow into my face, writhing around on the bed and moaning, "For the love of God, STOP IT, PLEASE!" 


And she had 8am classes and I didn't.  Every morning she was up before me.  I didn't mind that.  But there was something inside one of her drawers that she kept in a walmart bag.  The rustling of that stinking walmart bag at 7:30 am when I didn't have to be up for another hour was enough drive me batty.

But I never said anything. I may not have been a Christian at the time but I was a nice person and I was polite.  She and her perky sister didn't have the market cornered on "nice."  Even us heathens could pull that off.

Before long Lindsay had a boyfriend from third floor Phillips.  It was common knowledge that Lindsay and Nick had never "done it."  I don't know if he was a Christian or not but he respected her enough to hold out for her.  He was incredibly smart.  One of those people that you can just tell will go on to get a masters, or maybe even a Ph.D.  (He had a fondness for Carl Sandburg.  Being an English major, I thought I should too so I bought a book of Sandburg poetry at the college bookstore.  I never even cracked it.  The following year, some of my friends who stayed in touch with his visited the house he shared with several other guys.  I went into his room and saw that he had copied lines from Sandburg's poems with a sharpie on his walls and ceilings.  Out of a book he borrowed from the library.  I had never felt like such a fraud.  Last I heard he was attending a Grad school in Wyoming and was married to a girl named Sadie.)

I had a boyfriend too.  I wish I could say that I took advantage of the wonderful, godly example that God placed in my path.  But I can't.  I threw myself at him like a love-starved teenaged girl and held nothing back.  At the end of the school year, he had already packed up his room and needed a place to sleep.  I said he could sleep in my room (which I had hardly been in since we had met--couldn't stand to be around that holier-than-thou crowd, y'know).  Lindsay put her foot down and said she wasn't comfortable with it.  My boyfriend and I had to unload his car and sleep on the floor in his room instead.  I was so mad at her, I don't think I ever spoke to her again after that.  School ended (and so did our boyfriends) and we moved on and our paths never crossed again.

It's painful for me to dredge up all those memories.  I don't really like who I was then and I can't help but think of the what-if's.  What if I would have let myself be influenced by Lindsay?  How would my college experience and consequently, my life, have changed?  How much shame and regret would I have been spared? 

The reason I am thinking about them this morning is because I have been looking back on Genesis at the completion of my monumental nine month study and the story that haunts me the most is the story of Lot.  He seems like a relatively minor character.  Though he survived the destruction of Sodom, he will forever be remembered for his wife being turned into a pillar of salt and for offering his virgin daughters to the pack of disgusting animals that waited outside his door.  Great legacy, right?

He did have a small portion of faith.  How could he not, having spent so much of his life in the shadow of his uncle, Abraham?  To Lot's credit, he believed the angels who came to warn him about the impending destruction.  Though he had become desensitized to sin after so many years in Sodom, he knew enough of Abraham's God to know that He didn't mess around.  He went to his daughters' fiances (I bet he neglected to mention what he almost did to their future wives) and told them in Genesis 19:14a, "Quick, get out of the city! The Lord is about to destroy it."  The bible doesn't describe Lot's life in sodom but one can pretty well guess how far he had strayed from Abraham's godly influence by the reaction of his future sons-in-law to his terrible news.  "But the young men thought he was only joking," Genesis 19:14b.

After dragging his butt, arguing with the angels, hesitating, and waffling, he barely makes it out.  All he has are his two daughters.  He has influenced no one in Sodom, not even his own family.  He had an opportunity, having lived in a depraved land and having witnessed God move in the life of his uncle, of saving hundreds or thousands, or maybe even hundreds of thousands.  God would have spared the city for 50 righteous people.  45 righteous people.  40, 30, 20--even 10 righteous people would have saved them all (Genesis 18:24-32).  But Lot's witness was totally wasted.

Well maybe not wasted.  Nothing is wasted, right?  Every word that finds its way into scripture is there to teach us something.  Lot's life made no impact on the world around him but his story still shows us today how a person can be saved and still be useless to God.

Do you see why that haunts me?  I was like Lot back in college and Lindsay was Abraham.  I had been baptized.  I attended church as a child.  I knew God.  He gave me Lindsay to show me and teach me but I was not interested in that.  I wanted Sodom.  That was a time in my life when I was useless to God. 

But it wasn't wasted either.  The story ends well.  I followed that worthless boyfriend around, working where he worked over the summer.  After he dumped me and fell off the face of the earth, I continued working at the same place.  Three years later, near the end of my junior year of college, I was walking back from my lunch break and crossed paths with a handsome security guard with a dark crew cut and light blue eyes.  A year later we were saying, "I do."  Eleven years and three kids later, we are still going strong.

Lot's story ends well too, eventually.  One of his surviving daughters gave birth to Moab, whose family later became the Moabites.  Though they fought with and tormented Abraham's descendants, the Hebrews, all was not lost.  Ruth, grandmother of David, ancestor of Jesus Christ, was a Moabitess.



Friends, how would the people who know you best react if you told them about God?  Would they think you were joking?  Would they laugh in your face?  If so, then something needs to change.  We don't have the same sense of urgency as Lot.  Our world isn't going to end by dawn tomorrow.  But it will end some day.  And what we do with our time here--it matters.  The people we influence for good matters.  Lindsay's influence, though it was not felt at the time, it mattered.  Don't let your witness be wasted and drag your feet when the time comes to follow God out of this world like Lot did.  Who would have followed me if God had spoken to me at that time in my life and told me to warn everyone?  We get to read his story today to learn how to leave behind a better legacy than he did.  Take advantage of it.  You never know how your life will make an impact.