I find it sadly ironic that many of us reject hell while at the same time live within it.
The Christmas Vacation movie, starring Chevy Chase, has a great illustration of everyday hell-on-earth. After disaster upon disaster occurs during the days leading up to the Griswold family Christmas celebration, Clark responds to his wife’s advice that everyone go home before things get worse:
“Worse! How could they get any worse! Take a look around you, Ellen, we’re at the threshold of hell!”
Hell is our personal separation—here on earth—from the receipt of sincere love, the affirmation of parents, understanding between ourselves and others, vital health, what we imagine “success” to be: in general it is a separation—here on earth—from peace and contentment in all circumstances.
If any one of us cannot say we have been in our own personal hell—be it an addiction; a stalemate with a spouse; rejection in job, friendship or romance; a physical illness or disability; impending death for ourselves or the death of a loved one; the loss of a home through foreclosure or natural disaster; being wrongly accused be it on a grand or small scale; estrangement….If we can say we have not experienced hell on this earth then I think we are not cognizant of what hell really is.
Because nobody escapes the above list of possibilities in life.
Sure, there are ranges and degrees, and what may not seem like hell to others, may, due to our current mental and physical state, indeed be hell to us.
The reason that all of the potential hellish states of being exist is due to our ultimate separation from God.
How do I mean that?
I mean that, even though those states of hell-on-earth exist and do not go away—even when we desire and include God in our life, those states of hell-on-earth become other than hell-on-earth.
God removes the hell of it all by staying with and getting us through the physical, emotional, and mental crisis or breakdown.
A beautiful example I always go to is this:
A meek, sincere, mature, quiet, physically hard-working Godly man in his 60’s was diagnosed with late stage melanoma.
After months of undergoing treatment, he said something I have never forgotten and which brings me genuine comfort and confidence:
“The Lord will work a miracle. Either He will cure my cancer, or He will take me home.”
This man lived in the peace and contentment of Christ that kept hell at bay.
Jesus Christ…His peace, His gentle yoke is what keeps us out of hell, here on earth, here and now.
Copyright Barb Harwood
“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me.” John 14:1
“…the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” John 14:26-27
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