Tag: hell

Let the numbers tell this story

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While the numbers in my college statistics courses were fascinating and I applied them well in my Master’s thesis, I must admit that math was never really my forte.  I’ll blame it on Mr. Courtright!  Our Algebra II/Trigonometry course in high school was a constant source of frustration!  John and a couple of the other male students would pour over the text book with him at the front of the room trying to understand the lessons he was supposed to be teaching that day.  Yeah, you got that right:  high school seniors trying to figure out advanced mathematics on the fly!  I am so very glad that I never again had to sit through a traditional math class after that one!

Statistics are a different genre though.  Statistics often tell a story that we can use to make sense out of the stuff of life.  For example, landing one standard deviation from the mean (the average) in a bell-shaped curve can help us feel like things are going to be o.k. most of the time, in the right scenario of course!  Enter here special numerals applied to my recent trip with Steve to Georgia and South Carolina that will tell this story better than I can even without a calculator!  Oh how I wish some of these were more comforting than the majority of them though . . .

Over 7 days of camping in 2 locations, I was unable to leave the travel trailer 3 of the days due to illness.

My beloved Steve attended 2 of the 3 family wedding-related activities in Georgia and I attended zero.

We travelled over 2,000 miles in my truck with our 67-pound German shepherd, Elle, settled sweetly behind the jump seat of the King Cab.  Such a great traveler she has become!

I prepared about 96% of all of my own meals making this trip more of a “business as usual” affair than vacation in the realm of food.

One hour of the five that I spent in our friends’ home on Monday was spent in continuous convulsive episodes on their couch.  Thankfully the two young children had already gone off to bed when I crashed; graciously the three adults prayed over me for the Lord’s tender care as we all go forward from the significant stressors in our lives.

The kids and I planted 32 daffodil bulbs the morning we left South Carolina, overplanted with dozens of anise hyssop seeds.  Hooray!  By Springtime the view from the kitchen window of their log cabin will be alive with flowers interspersed amongst the numerous towering pines.

daffodils, mini daffodils, buttercup flowers, Spring flowers

A threatening wind storm with gusts up to 40 MPH forced us to leave a day early for safety towing our Camplite on the highways to get back home.  Just a few minutes after we arrived home at 4:00 a.m., the winds increased again closer to the estimate of 50 MPH by morning.  We had blown in just in time, praise the Lord!

Nearly 4 days have passed since we got home and I have yet to clear out, clean out the rest of the trailer as needed after a week of travel.  Steve completed the first 5 loads of laundry and about 3 more are left to go.  I have been sick in bed for most of the past 3 days, sleeping in late to recover from the nasties which characterize this wretched illness.

Over a dozen doses of a new anti-microbial treatment (Biocidin LSF) have brought both relief and a flare up of symptoms at times:  begun when travelling and continued back home when seeking a new direction, new relief, new hope for a future without illness.  Two violent convulsive episodes followed on Friday after an appointment with a new specialist and a new lab test, respectively.  Many more filled the 2 days that followed.  Perhaps this week (and 2 weeks shy of the 4-year anniversary of the first waking seizure attack) there will be an answer to end this suffering?  The odds are wearing thin lately for sure.

Yet through it all, I am reminded of the 3 days that my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ died and paid the price for all the negative numbers, the heartaches from what is not right in our world.  He knows the mathematics of it all greater than I can ever imagine and holds it all tenderly in the palms of His hands, ready to redeem it for good when He comes again in glory.  I choose to believe the promise that His precious thoughts towards me and you too, Gentle Reader, outnumber the grains of sand on the earth (Psalm139), giving us hope for a better tomorrow.  For as He thinks fondly of the ones He loves, He also promises to wipe away our every tear someday (Rev 21:4) when the time is right:  when time is no longer numbered in eternity with our Heavenly Father, God.

And that my friend is a story worth writing about.  A world without limits.  A love beyond measure.  I just hope that when all is said and done, when it is time for rejoicing in the heavenly realms, that you will be there with me there too?  Let not these numbers be wasted!  Won’t you accept the love of Christ into your heart this day, this night too?  Oh how I hope so dear one.

With love, JJ

Hell on Earth

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I was reminded listening to the words of a friend the other day that not everyone believes that there is both a heaven and a hell.  Funny how choosing to believe something doesn’t exist, does not mean that it in fact does not exist!  If the source for ultimate truth is the Bible, the very representation of God Himself, then this is the place for us to turn on such matters.  Since I am not a Bible scholar, I will enlist the help of Hank Haanagraf from the Christian Research Institute to shed a little light on the subject:

 First, Christ, the Creator of the cosmos, clearly communicated hell’s irrevocable reality. In fact, He spent more time talking about hell than He did about heaven. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7), He explicitly warned His followers more than a half-dozen times about the dangers that lead to hell. In the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24–25), He repeatedly told His followers of the judgment to come. In His famous story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16), He graphically portrayed the finality of eternal torment in hell.

Furthermore, the concept of choice demands that we believe in hell. Without hell, there is no choice. Without choice, heaven would not be heaven; heaven would be hell. The righteous would inherit a counterfeit heaven, and the unrighteous would be incarcerated in heaven against their wills, which would be a torture worse than hell. Imagine spending a lifetime voluntarily distanced from God only to find yourself involuntarily dragged into His loving presence for all eternity. The alternative to hell would be worse than hell itself in that humans made in the image of God would be stripped of freedom and forced to worship God against their will.

Finally, common sense regarding justice dictates that there must be a hell. Without hell, the wrongs of Hitler’s Holocaust would never be righted. Justice would be impugned if, after slaughtering six million Jews, Hitler merely died in the arms of his mistress with no eternal consequences. The ancients knew better than to think such a thing.  [“Ask Hank” column of the Christian Research Journal, volume 27, number 1 (2004)]

We read that in hell there will be darkness, eternal separation from God, unquenchable fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth.  For all of eternity, a person will never be able to get comfortable or find relief.  Wow.  All this for turning one’s back on the God of the universe who created each one of us, loves us unconditionally, promises to never leave us or forsake us . . . if we but repent and believe in Him.  A reasonable choice I would say given the rewards, given the consequences for not doing so!  I opt for the eternal party in heaven with streets of gold and the mansion with many rooms He is now preparing for His own.  I trust that many Gentle Readers of this blog have made the same decision for Christ as Lord and Savior.

In the meantime, believers and non-believers alike must live in a fallen world where Satan rules, not God.  What?  Surely God is here, dwells in the hearts of those who love Him, reveals Himself through the wonder of nature and the blessings He bestows upon us, right?  Yes He does.  He will not rule, however, until He comes again in glory at His second coming.  Until then, we must face the consequences of sin and everything short of the Garden of Eden.  At times and increasingly in the world in which we live, we see evil and darkness.  Increasingly we see and experience what we might call “hell on earth.”  Perhaps you have tasted this yourself.  I know I have many times . . . my personal hell plays out every day as I battle a serious illness.  Wretched, man.

If you want to make sure you don’t end up in hell, well then I invite you to get connected to the Lord, Jesus Christ personally.  While there are no guarantees that you will not suffer in this life, you are guaranteed that you will live gloriously in heaven with your Heavenly Father and believers who have gone before you . . . FOREVER.  Now that’s a guarantee that pulls me through any glimpse of hell on earth these days.

All of this is good to reflect on and get straight right before Christmas.  After all, the holiday traditions will fade.  Christmas presents will break down someday and the fruitcake will live on beyond most of us in a garbage dump somewhere!  But even fruitcake will turn to dust eventually.  And when it does I know where I will be.   I will no longer have seizures, chronic illness, and chronic pain.  Everything will be perfect.  (Happy sigh.)

How about you?

To Hell and Back: Part 1

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The Bible tells us that in hell there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  There will be unquenchable fire, separation from the loving and gracious tri-une God and it will be forever.  And “forever” is a concept that is nearly impossible for us humans to understand since we live in a temporal, finite world where God is with us if we but reach out and call upon His name.

To me, hell sounds like unending misery at the highest level.  There will be no relief and eternal darkness in hell.  When physical and emotional trials push us beyond the breaking point in our lives, like the pain of an acute injury or death of a loved one, perhaps we may start to imagine what hell might be like.  Fortunately this level of anguish in our lives tends not to continue for the rest of our lives.  Often there is a measure of relief at some point.  When that relief comes we can also be grateful that the Lord is merciful, that joy may return if we but keep our eyes focused on Him.  While He promises that He will never give us more than we can handle, the only way to “handle” the acute level of misery is with Him.  Don’t we all say it no matter what our beliefs, “God help me!”  His presence in this life is a supernatural, mysterious phenomenon.  It is also an indwelling benefit (through the Holy Spirit) when we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
My personal hell began in the wee hours of the morning on July 6, 2013.  My husband, Steve, and I had just driven 16 hours through the night from our home in Indiana to visit family in Hot Springs, Arkansas.  We had made 2 longer stops, some shorter stops, and were grateful to finally arrive at 5:00 a.m. EST.  We were also glad that his parents had made it from their primary residence in California to this second home just hours before us and had left the door open.  But when I stepped inside the door I sensed some mustiness and fragrances that might not go well with my Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome.  I had made an attempt to let them know my sensitivities before our trip but I guess it wasn’t sent through the proper channels in a timely and meaningful manner for them to act on the information.
I helped Steve unpack the car and did a quick scan around the house.  Yes, the carpet and fixtures were older and the place had remained vacant for most of the past year.  Someone was hired to keep it clean and that may have provided other issues from the chemically-laden cleaning solutions.  The bedspread and bed skirt were cute but appeared dusty so we removed both and put them in the closet.  I saw decorative aromatic sticks on a shelf in the bathroom with scented hand soap in a dispenser on the sink.  The mattress in the guest bedroom was uncovered and appeared older but we couldn’t do anything about all of that at that late hour.  I put our own clean sheet over the top sheet on the bed and Steve opened the windows.  Gratefully, the air was cooler overnight in this shady part of Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.  We prepared for bed and hoped for the best.  We were trashed from travelling for sure.
Within a few seconds the seizure attacks began.  Oh these weren’t the usual kind where my body shakes uncontrollably from my torso through my limbs, I can’t breathe, and I may or may not groan in discomfort as my head whips forward and backward or side-to-side.  This time the movement was so violent that my body was lifting up and down from the bed repeatedly!  The chest compression-like tightness was so bad that it restricted my breathing painfully so; I wondered if my heart was beating at all!  The violent attacks lasted about 20 seconds each and continued with a 30-90 second break in between each one.  I had no idea when the next one was coming!  I gasped to catch my breath.  Steve was in horror.  He had bad attacks before many times before but not this bad!
I could not speak, move, or do anything to help myself.  I held on for dear life.  Aware that my father and mother-in-law were sleeping in the next room, I struggled to keep from vocalizing during the episodes.  Finally anguish broke through and I could not stop myself from sobbing uncontrollably.  What a wretched episode to have to endure!
In my own strength, I developed a plan. I was feeling nauseous and vomiting appeared imminent. If I started vomiting, then I would blurt out through the seizure attacks for Steve to call an ambulance! So there. I had now identified what I considered to be the worse-case scenario and what we would do if it happened. With that in mind, I held on a little longer . . .
There was no indication that my living hell would ever stop.  I could not find a way out on my own.  I had caught a glimpse of hell on earth and it appeared that I was stuck there indefinitely.  Dear Lord, I’m coming home!
See, “To Hell and Back:  Back by Grace (Part 2)” for the conclusion of this blog post.