Where God is Not

Where God is Not

"'I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.'" --John 16:33

"'My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.'" --John 14:2-3

"They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might." --2 Thessalonians 1:9

We often envision hell as a red-black cavern licked by flames, a network of underground tunnels echoing with the sinister laugh of a pitch-forked, life-of-the-party cartoon devil, a lake of unquenchable fire. Perhaps these descriptions are true--but only partially. 

Hell is the absence of God. Hell is the utter absence of anything--anything--good.

We speak of hell on earth. Surely we know from experience that in this world we will have trouble. Floods and earthquakes ravage. Disease descends at random. Powerful people prosper. Innocent men die at the hands of others, and vengeful men extract their pound of flesh.

Yet we speak of heaven on earth because we know joy and we know goodness. We have the delight of rainbows, the smell of coffee, the squish of chubby baby cheeks, and the tumbling warmth of golden retriever puppies. We have heroes, first responders, defenders, and givers. We have blue skies to which we lift our eyes and breathe. We have deep, black, diamond-studded skies under which we stand in silent awe. We have oceans to lap away our stress. We have the strength and companionship of friends with hands held out to uplift, arms wrapped around to sustain, smiles and tears to share our human experience. We have places to go, escapes, options, and lifelines. We have the restraining hand of God and the presence of good alive in the souls of men to bring us protection, joy, healing, relief. We have love. We have Christ, a choice in a fraction of a breath, a mere eye-blink away.

I have joked that my personal hell would be an eternal February, or an infinite series of photocopier jams, or an endless day trapped inside a Wal-Mart. . . .

Some know, no joke, that the worst sort of personal hell would be an eternal war zone, or an infinite moment of unspeakable silence in a dark bedroom, or an endless loop of that time the phone rang. . . .

Hell is all lying. All cheating. All perversion. All getting away with it. All violence unchecked.

Hell is innocent bystanders mowed down in cold blood but with no one around sensitive enough to be horrified.

Hell is more oppressive than a thousand middle-school bullies and lonelier than a car running in a sealed-up garage.

Hell is colder than blue-black February and hotter than asphalt on bare feet in August.

Hell is only bad and only more and more of it.

Hell is the absence of God.

Hell is the utter absence of anything--anything--good.

There is no cartoon H. E. Double Hockey Sticks.

And as bad as this world is, it is not hell.

There is no filter in hell.

No restraint.

No relief.

But heaven? Heaven is here, an undercurrent, a swell, a bright vein of eternity tucked deep in dark pockets and glimmering up on the heights.  Heaven is always in reach amidst the happiness and horrors of this life. It is within reach because Jesus Christ, God as a human, came here and extended his hand to us.

Hell is where God is not.

But I have entrusted my soul to the One who has gone to prepare a place for me where the Great I Am is.

ErinRMS 7/8/16

Ho Hoan Kiem image

Thoughts on Viet Nam from Viet Nam.

What makes home

Home?

It's the people, of course. 

And it's the feel of a place,

The smell I can't name,

And the sounds and the air and the taste,

And the way my soul, skittering

So often off track,

Settles in

At home. 

Is it any wonder, then,

Why this place feels like home

Even when I clearly don't belong?

Even when I don't look right,

Talk right,

Walk right,

Laugh right,

Eat right?

I am awkward and big and white 

And tongue-tied and wide-eyed--

All knees and nose and hips and teeth. 

Words in my ears 

Mean no more and no less 

Than music.

Words off my tongue drop dumb 

Like silly broken bricks.

So I am clearly not at home. 

But there are people here who know me.

There are people here

Who know my name,

Just like home. 

There is a past, a future,

And a precious, precious present,

Just like home. 

When I am home (my real home)

My heart hurts and my brain connives

To find my way back here.

When the wheels touch down,

When my feet stand grounded again,

Every time,

Though I know I am

A strange stranger

Who will never really belong,

I am home. 

ErinRMS 3/2016

Created Space

So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God,who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.  

--2 Corinthians 5:16-20

Last week one of the vocabulary words my high school students learned was reconciliation. The word means to mend a relationship, to bring two unlike things into agreement, or to come to terms with something.  Again, this week, as the boys were studying the World War I era in U.S. History, the term irreconcilable came up. The irreconcilables were those who absolutely refused to agree to the stipulations set forth in the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. And then this morning I read in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that "God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation" (italics mine).

So now I'm wondering: What exactly does it mean to be reconciled to God in Christ? What is the message of reconciliation? Is anyone truly irreconcilable?

There are those whose version of the message of reconciliation grabs its hearers in a chokehold and yanks them toward the end result without considering the means. There are those who have been nearly irreparably wounded by this distortion of the message and have limped away from this perversion of God, never to return.  Reconciliation is not merely conforming to a lifestyle or adapting to a new set of beliefs.

As believers reconciled to God in Christ and given in turn the message of reconciliation to the world, we are not here to force anything. We are not here to break people so that we can splint their brokenness with our own rigidity. We are here to shout our joy from the rooftops:

Our sins are not being counted against us!

You who snapped at your son this morning and still hear your words ringing in the air between you. . .

You who sit mute next to your friend and can't shape wordsaround the truth you wish would ring in her heart. . .

You who struggle with perfection. . .

You who struggle with addiction. . .

You who cheated on your wife last week. . .

You who cheated on a test in fifth grade. . .

You who are plagued with guilt for sneaking a cookie. . .
You who won't look yourself in the mirror because you don't want to feel any guilt at all. . .

God knows.

And he knew.

And he is not counting people's sins against them!

We're getting out of jail free!

It's a grace day.

A grace day. 

Reconciliation is not about becoming a Christian. Reconciliation is about your grace day--the day Christ climbed to the cross carrying the full knowledge of the pain to which he would subject himself and the full weight of what he was accomplishing for humankind.

On the cross, the Father broke from the Son so that we--you and I--could be reconciled to Him. The rending of Father from Son in that moment opened a gap, and the gap is now filled with the souls of the ones who will claim their grace day. Where his blood poured out, his children pour in. You are invited into the created space--the created grace--between the Father and the Son.

This is reconciliation. It is so far beyond morals, lifestyles, music styles, and dress codes that it leaves those things completely shriveled and powerless in the dust on the hill at the foot of the ancient cross.

From the cross, Jesus makes his appeal: "Be reconciled to God."

Believe. 
Place your hand into the hole in my side.
Be reconciled. 
Place yourself into the space I created, here next to the heart of God. 

This is where new creations are born. This is reconciliation.

ErinRMS 2/26/16