DESPAIR in HELL

                      Did you see the INTRODUCTION to this A to Z series? Check it out here.

In the introduction to this series, I asked you to imagine that hell is real. Now I want to ask you to really stretch your imagination and try to picture something absolutely impossible. Try to picture the slightest trouble, in heaven. I know, right? Inconceivable! But let's try.

Heaven is better than earth, true? Of course. In fact, it is said that life on earth is both the believer's hell, and the heaven of the unbeliever. So the good things of earth will at least continue in heaven, though they are more likely to improve dramatically in wonder and beauty and goodness and joy etc. etc.. One of the good things that will continue for the believer in heaven is God's Word. Jesus said that his Word "will never pass away."

So if there WERE any trouble in heaven; any sad remembrances of our sinful past, any obstacles or traps, any pains or anxieties; we would be able to bring our concerns straight to Jesus, but of course, ever more directly than we do now when we are burdened with the like. Here are a few examples of casting cares upon the Lord from Psalm 25.

"Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways; according to your love remember me for you are good, O Lord."  Psalm 25:7  We can talk to God about anything, now and in heaven.

"My eyes are ever on the Lord, for only he will release my feet from the snare." Psalm 25:15  We have nothing to dread, neither here or in heaven.

"Look upon my affliction and my distress and take away all my sins." Psalm 25:18  If even now, while still habitually inclined to transgress God's standard, we can call upon him for relief of every worry, in heaven, we will forget all about burdens and just shrug our shoulders in confusion if such a word comes up in a game of Scrabble!

In hell, not so much. If Dante was right, and the inscription over the entry to hell does, in fact, say "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," you might take it as a challenge to your self-reliance and thus endure for a few centuries without DESPAIR, but it will come. For every chance you have now or would have had if you had elected to repent and accept God's forgiveness, to talk freely with the Creator, you will then be regretting fully what was forsaken. The chance to bring any burden to the Father will be forfeit. There will be no going back, no return, no second chance, no possibility of parole, and no hope.

We think we know something of DESPAIR because sometimes the pizza is burned or the Internet crashes, or the car crashes, or a bomb explodes or a tornado strikes. These are just a tickle compared to the DESPAIR worn and carried and intimately enwrapped about those in hell.





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