Hot

Today will be the second day over 100 degrees.  Funny how heat is the result of atoms moving quicker, but it makes you feel like going  s l o w e r.

It takes weeks like this to remind us that so much of our lives are surrounded by self-selected comfort.  We have tailored the environment around us to suit us.  We have two cats that are outside cats and they seem to do just fine in this heat.  They might lie around a bit more and seek shade more often, but they pretty much take whatever they are dealt in the weather department.  They do well in 2 feet of snow as well as 102 degrees.  We humans are the ones who bend the world around us to what we are more comfortable with.

It makes me think of an uncomfortable thought.

We won't always have this amount of self-determination.  The Bible speaks of a time in our lives when we are old and other people will lead us places that we don't want to go.  And then after this life, Jesus speaks of a place of eternal separation from God in which we will no longer have the opportunity to set things right with God.  If we take the scriptures at face value, we can't get around the fact that hell is a place of eternal discomfort.  It is a place in which we will find an eternal wall between us and God.

That makes me think twice about the sin I consider.  And it makes me want to make sure that the people I love never find themselves there.  Here is what I go through mentally:

- We are here
- Life is pretty complex, how could there not be a creator?
- If there is a creator, why would it be unknowable?
- If it can be known, what have we heard?
- Among the world religions, only one person has claimed to be God.
- This person told us about who God is.
- This person told us about what lies beyond - heaven and hell.

So even though I find it hard to appreciate, and I don't know why it is there . . . I can't get away from the fact it is there.  I trust Jesus and He warned us of its presence.

So on days like this, when I think of inescapable heat, I can't help but think of making sure I never wind up on the other side of a great chasm from God.  This doesn't mean I judge or condemn or point fingers or presume to know who winds up there . . . more like a sober understanding that I am not God and He does things that are outside of my understanding.  So I am better off responding to his love  than embracing my desires.