“No one, having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”

Jesus said that.

It makes me think of Lot’s wife. She looked back on Sodom and Gomorrah as it burned, and turned into a pillar of salt.

To me, it’s a metaphor for becoming bitter by dwelling in the past. It’s easy to look back on your old, “comfortable” life and become dismayed with current troubles. It’s easy to forget the problems attached to your old lifestyle. The largest of them being the lack of an eternal future… but your old self didn’t know anything of eternity, or have a desire to seek it. It wanted ease, comfort and “stuff.” And it wanted it right now.

It’s apples to oranges.

You can’t compare your previous self and circumstances to what you are as a new creature in Christ. You are not the same person, and you don’t want the same things. Looking back is not only pointless, but detrimental.

If you focus on what was, you are liable to trip over what is.