When Routine Becomes Challenge

What do you do when easy jobs suddenly seem like a major mountain to climb? Only last week I had a sobering experience. 

I have a number of more bulky items than normal ready to take to the tip. Through visiting recycling centres in other parts of the country, I have become familiar with the way these things work. Once you have lifted the goods into the boot of the car, you have only to take them round and there will be plenty of help to guide you to the right places to deposit them. Simple! All done in a matter of half an hour or less, on a good day.

Thus far I have shied away from going to my local centre. Winter ailments have been a good excuse to not do anything remotely adventurous. But last week I began to feel that it was time to take action. I assembled all my junk in the driveway ready to go – and then felt simply unable to load it up and be on my way. All I could do was throw a tarpaulin over it and leave it for another day.

What a wimp, I thought to myself! To be like that is quite unnerving. But I dare say I am not alone. Many people who ought to have the gifts and strengths to go on carrying out certain tasks become unable to face them any more.

Moses was a very modest individual. When God first called him to lead Israel, he was reluctant to comply. He made excuse after excuse. God (as is His way) gave Moses sign after sign to overcome his hesitations. Yet His reluctant servant still insisted on seeing the downside:

But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (Exodus 4:10-13 ESV).

Moses, remember, is the very man who had been quite happy to speak up for a Hebrew when an Egyptian man struck him! He even took vigorous action – he killed the Egyptian (Exodus 2:11-13). He wasn’t backward in coming forward then!

There are those who suffer from the onset of crippling mental health issues who cannot ever be expected to rise to the occasion again. It is no use lecturing them. No doubt also age and frailty eventually reduce nearly everyone’s powers. But Moses was God’s man and God wasn’t going to let matters rest there in his case.

Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him” (verses 14-16).

I’ll see how I feel about finishing the job later on this week …

I don’t know what your situation is today. Everyone must be wise about his or her limits and certain things need to be dropped. But never underestimate the strength Christ gives you to serve Him, if you are His child.

“I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13).

Hell

This Easter time saw some interesting discussions on the media. Some of them concerned the Pope’s apparent denial that hell existed.

We were treated to the intriguing sight of one journalist asking another, 

“Do you believe in hell?"

The other was completely taken aback and brushed the question aside. He clearly did not spend much time thinking about that subject, as he most likely did not believe in anything spiritual anyway.

I am an unashamed believer in the existence of hell. Even atheists can identify something that they would refer to as hell. Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote a book entitled, 

“Hell is other people”. 

It is many decades since I studied that book at uni, but I seem to remember it was about a group of incompatible people forced to keep each other company to all eternity and getting on one another’s nerves. The story certainly ended up being rather hellish.

Many others agree that you can have experiences which strike you then and later as hell on earth. A First World War poet wrote a piece which began, 

“I died in hell; they call it Passchendaele”. 

Life on the Western Front during those years was indeed a living hell for tens of thousands of troops who were fighting for the the various combatant countries.

After the television discussion it was conceded that the Pope probably did not deny the existence of hell. To do so would have been to overthrow 2000 years of church teaching and would amount to heresy. He may have said something to the effect that hell is nowhere in space-time, not “down below”, any more than heaven is “up above”. It would then be in another dimension outside of time. Whether he believes, like some fashionable thinkers, that it does not involve a literal eternal torment, I do not know.

There is no doubt that Jesus meant us to take hell seriously. By some calculations, He actually did more teaching about hell than about heaven. He seemed to be quoting the Old Testament when He referred to eternal torment. In Isaiah 66:24 God says of His people,

“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24 [ESV2011])

This imagery was eagerly seized on by preachers in the Middle Ages. They wanted to impress their congregations, often simple and uneducated folk, with lurid pictures of the consequences of not obeying God. There is, however, a way of looking at hell which may be more mature: hell is eternal separation from God. To enjoy eternity with God is bliss; if there is such a thing as time, you don’t notice it, because you are so absorbed in seeing the face of the Blessed One. To be removed from God’s presence for all eternity would give a sense of huge disappointment and loss.

The concept of hell certainly isn’t easy to fit into human logic (why would God allow such a distressing element in His creation to persist for all eternity?), but then God respects human choices. If humans are determined endlessly to reject Him, God honours their decision and allows them space to do precisely that.