Oh, hell.
Recently I was writing a sermon and a story about my sister, Laura, came to mind. It seemed like a good story to use to further illustrate the point I was trying to make. I wrote for a little while and then began to feel self-conscious and doubtful as to whether using that particular story was the right choice. As doubt grew roots in me I began to wonder if I was even remembering the story accurately. Maybe not, I thought. I stopped writing. I turned to my stack of journals and determined to find the story to see if I remembered it correctly. I was certain the first journal I picked up was not the right one. It was too old and I thought the story happened more recently, but I wasn’t sure where the story was, so I figured I’d look through them all. I opened the old journal at random, and well, you know what happened. It opened to the exact page on which I had recorded the story in question. The page was marked with a dried flower that I’d tucked into it a long time ago. It was a single blood red petal that I picked off of a bush in Gehenna Valley outside of the old city in Jerusalem 10 or so years ago.
Oh, hell, I thought to myself. Hell, you see, is the English translation of the Greek word Gehenna. In many cases where hell is mentioned in the New Testament the original Greek word is Gehenna. Gehenna Valley is outside the holy city, below the Temple mount, and in the first century it was used as a dumping ground for trash and debris. It was not an altogether pleasant place in Jesus’ day. That’s why he would often use it in his teaching. He taught that we should draw close to God and each other in love. Anything else is to be, well, like living in Gehenna, the city dump. This is actually one of the most practical and straightforward images Jesus uses in his teaching. Over time we made Gehanna/hell into an eternal torture chamber. We’ve done some strange things with Jesus’ teachings over the years.
Anyway, today Gehenna Valley looks like Augusta National golf course. It is beautiful and when I was there it was full of blooming flowers. So, I picked one. A flower from hell.
I don’t know about hell as a place you might go when you die. That’s above my pay grade. But I do know about Gehenna/hell as a place I can go to today when obsession and worry and self-doubt kick down the front door to my mind, take over, and carry me off into a deep valley far from the heart of the city.
I don’t want to make too much of opening that old journal right to the story in question and finding the flower from hell, but I don’t want to make too little of it either. I took it as a little nudge from God, the universe, and my sister saying, “Keep going, just stay humble and make a sincere effort to be increasingly loving and all will be well. Use the story.”
