“Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind!” Tall order! “Love your neighbour as you love yourself!” Fat chance! I don’t have to know myself very well to know how far short I fall in the love department. The longer I love God the deeper I know how little my love is next to God’s extravagance, loyalty, passion. Knowing that is Hell some days.
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The Hebrew name for Hell was Gehenna, after the valley outside Jerusalem where rubbish was tipped and fires burned and it was said that, once upon a time, children had been sacrificed. No wonder Ezekiel’s people had a terror of tombs and dead bodies. Not just our horror-film-fed squeamishness but a bone-deep, religious, aversion. Ezekiel is sent in his vision to walk in a valley of dead bones. Hell. Horror, waste, desolation. It speaks of death and hopelessness. It echoes with disgust and sheer god-forsakenness.
We each have our own Gehenna, our own half-ignored valley of death, and we all have God’s pledge that even these bones can live, even what we have given up for dead can be a home to God’s life-giving spirit.
If even hell can’t resist God’s life-giving love I find a seed of hope for my own love-resisting heart. I find God looking at me, knowing me bone-deep … and against all odds loving me, liking me into life.