Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 122 · May 2
Looking Back
“And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Most of us have made the third man's request and thought it was a reasonable one. We are not asking to turn back for good. We only want an afternoon at home first, and we want to leave the door to the old life open at the end of it.
Two men on that road have already heard hard answers when the third one speaks: "Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house." Jesus answers: "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." A farmer steers a light wooden plough with his eyes. If he turns his head, the furrow bends, and it stays bent until the harvest.
Now put Elisha beside this man, because his words were nearly the same. Elijah's cloak had just landed on Elisha while he was ploughing, and Elisha said, "Let me, I pray thee, kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow thee." He went home, and he was not refused. Then he killed his oxen, boiled their meat over the wooden gear they had pulled, and fed the people. After that, nobody in his village wondered whether he would be back. So Luke is not giving us a rule about saying goodbye. Elisha went home to close something for good, and the man on the road wanted to go home to keep a way back open.
That puts us with the third man. Our oxen are still alive. We keep the old boss's number, a friendship that has ended in words but not in fact, and the person we could easily go back to being. We call these things wisdom when they are really ways of looking back, and the crooked furrow shows it.
Yet the furrow was never kept straight by our own steadiness. Elijah's cloak fell on a man who had not asked for it, so the call came first. Paul says the same about every believer: "he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ." So may the One who called you keep your eyes on the field ahead. May He give you the courage to close the doors you have kept open, and may He finish the good work He began in you.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 122 is Inescapable Presence (Psalm 139:7-10).