No Way Out...Not Anytime Soon

A Face Book friend (and a member of the very first church I served) reminded me recently that I had once described Hell as a big bowl of cold oatmeal.  Yeah, I really did that.  When she reminded me of it, I could actually recall having written that into a sermon. 

I do not remember any other details of that sermon...and like many I have written and preached over nearly 40 years, there is no reason why it should have been memorable over a great period of time.  I think what I was trying to express in that very old sermon was the thought that if someone were to imagine themselves in an eternally nasty place (like Hell) it would be like imagining someone being suspended in a really big bowl of cold oatmeal.  Yuck.  No up or down; no forward or back; no gravity; no light; no way to get a grip on something substantial and lift yourself out of the mess.  No way out...not anytime soon.  Not ever.

I have not been a believer in a traditional notion of Hell...as a place God would send folks to be punished in a fiery pit...for a very long time.  But that disagreement I have with what many consider to be a staple of faith is not the point, here.  What is the point here is the feeling that folks have from time-to-time, or maybe even too-much-of-the-time, that they are trapped in something...some job, some relationship, some circumstance, some illness, some state of mind...from which they believe there is no way out...not anytime soon.

That is a terrible feeling.  Its Hell.  And I am not qualified to offer counseling or direction to someone caught long-term in that no way out...not anytime soon bowl of cold oatmeal situation.  I do hope that persons who find themselves in that place have friends who will rally round them, and some form of hopeful faith to encourage them, and can avail themselves of professionals who can help with counseling and perhaps medications.

I hope I said in that old sermon that because being in a place like a bowl of cold oatmeal would be Hell, it would not be a good and loving God who would have put us there...and that the faith we share should be, for goodness sake, one of hope, and light, and beauty, and grace, and compassion for ourselves and others who find themselves in bowl-of-cold-oatmeal Hells.

Maybe the following picture offers a bit of hope in that regard...a little light off in the distance as we make our way through an otherwise stormy-and-not-so-bright situation.

 “The real question is not whether life exists after death. The real question is whether you are alive before death."   -Osho

 

“The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.”
   -Carlos Castaneda

 

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
  -Frederick Buechner

 

A hellish bowl of cold oatmeal is no place to spend much time, if any.  I wish you better in this life.