NOTES for Luk 17:32
The Lord suggests us to remember something like turning behind. Because it was exactly the fault of Lot's wife (see Gen 19:26): she looked back.
There is this very sad utterance: "the only thing history teaches is that it teaches nothing!" - They are not Christian words, they are full of skepticism. The entire Bible is a history, a history of relationship between God and man, it teaches, and continues to teach humanity for centuries. Most of its lessons are already perceived, already became something self-evident. But it is necessary for us to reread it again and again, to learn what is not yet perceived. And one of such lesson is Lot's wife.
The Lord is always in front of us, He leads us into salvation, crossing this road before us. This means that we have to look at Him, to look forward, and not behind. It is impossible to live with the head turned behind, it is impossible to look for ideal in the past, because it is not there, since the Lord is always ahead! It would be good to remember the lessons that we received before (we are all Jesus’ followers), but it is of no use to come to standstill in the feelings of our former sins and pleasures: let's give them to God and “reach forth unto those things which are before”, as Apostle Paul writes (Philippians 3:13- 14).