Since I grew up in the South, I know what hot weather is all about. High temperatures plus humidity in Tennessee generally equaled steamy, miserable summertime heat. Perhaps it was because I was young, but I don't remember worrying about being outside or heat indexes or drinking enough water. It was just ... well, it was just summer in the South ... hot, humid summer in the South. My friends and I played outside all day and went swimming and filled our Army canteens with water from the garden hose and picked tomatoes and strawberries and sang songs in the tree house and chased lightning bugs and tied bandanas around our foreheads to keep the sweat from getting in our eyes and drank gallons and gallons and gallons of sweet tea and stretched out in the grass and watched the stars fill the sky when nighttime rolled around. It was just summer in the South ... hot, humid summer in the South ... and I loved it.
It's hot in Kansas City ... really, really hot ... and it's been really, really hot for a while now. Actually, it's hot all over the country this summer, and longstanding high temperature records are falling like dominoes as city after city bakes in the relentless heat of the sun. This afternoon, there was a power disruption in downtown KC ... a power outage that affected the area of town where my office is located. It happened around 1:00, and by 2:00, it was hot in our building ... really, really hot. When we received word around 2:30 that it would be a few hours before the power was restored, the owner of the company told us all to head home, and trust me, we all got the heck out of the hot building in a hurry. During the hour and a half that we were all sitting around watching each other begin to sweat (we couldn't do any work because we had no computers ... yep, there's a lesson about our total dependence on technology in that scenario for sure), I was forced to acknowledge that I'm so much more of a wuss about extremes in temperature now than I was when I was young. I drove home with the air in my car on the highest setting and dropped to my knees when I got home and uttered a prayer of thanksgiving for a working air conditioning system in my house.
I've been thinking a lot about heaven and hell lately, due in part to some conversations I've had with a couple of people over the last few weeks. One person believes that both heaven and hell are very real places just as they are described in the Bible and that based on whether or not we have a personal relationship with God, each one of us will spend eternity in one or the other when we die. The other person believes that the heaven and hell depicted in God's Word are figurative in nature and that we are not meant to interpret them as being real or literal places. It's so interesting to me that two people of similar backgrounds who were both raised in the same faith during the same time in history can have two such opposing views concerning one of the most basic tenants of Christianity. As I listened to them debating the subject again last week at lunch, it struck me that their differing beliefs speak volumes about those of us who call ourselves Christians. There are believers who believe that every single word of the Bible must be interpreted in a very literal, basic manner ... and there are believers who believe that the Bible must be interpreted based on context and cultural conditions that were present at the time it was written.
I always leave those conversations wondering one thing ... will they both go to heaven? They both love the Lord with all their hearts ... of that I have not one doubt. But if one doesn't believe in the realness of the beauty and grandeur of heaven or the burning heat of hell, what does that mean in regard to their place in eternity? Does her belief in some way hamper her relationship with God? Does He see each one of my two friends in a different way because they differ in their beliefs? And I always close my wondering thoughts by deciding that I will probably never know the answers to those questions ... well ... not until eternity, I suppose ... not until eternity.
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