I was reading a book I found in my sister’s room this week that was written by a man who had a vision of hell. Though I had initially asked Erica if she trusted the validity of the claim, as I began reading, whether I believed his account or not didn’t seem relevant because it was so thought-provoking just in its' imagery. In this account, he described how a demon tortured him by ripping open his chest with its caws. He wrote: “My flesh hung from my body like ribbons as I fell again to the cell floor…” He realized as he was being tortured that no blood flowed from his body. The ground too was barren, it was unlike any vision man had ever seen of earth; for even earth, when it is stripped bare and furrowed, still holds in its nakedness the hope of harvest. George Henry Lewes wrote: “remember that every drop of rain that falls bears into the bosom of the earth a quality of beautiful fertility.” There was no water in hell at all, for water and blood are symbols of life. There is no life in hell.
The author wrote of the how the desperate need for water overcame him. In Luke 16, Jesus describes the after-life in the story of Lazarus and the rich man. In this description the rich man in hell calls up to Abraham and pleads with him to send Lazarus even to just dip the tip of his finger in water and cool off his tongue, for he was in agony (Luke 16: 24). The torture of dehydration is hard for many of us to imagine. The brief periods that I have endured on wilderness hikes cannot even compare with experiences like Terri Schiavo’s. Kate Adamson was a stroke victim whose nourishment was terminated, but she unbelievably was able to regain bodily control in order to communicate. She barely escaped death by dehydration. Her description of that experience is horrifying. People say you can feel your organs drying; that it is one of the slowest most horrific deaths man can endure. After hearing stories like this, an eternity without water is nearly impossible to imagine.
And to think on earth that it falls free from the sky.
This weekend I left Manhattan and spent some time in Connecticut. Last night I was lying in bed between two girlfriends and as we were praying, I could feel the Spirit over me, inviting me to release areas in my life over to Him. As I did, I began to cry, and as water just streamed— uninvited and unstoppably from my eyes— I thought of what a bizarre phenomena tears are. Humans have water stream from their eyes when their souls are moved. Our tears are like a baptism of the soul. My aunt Rachel told me years ago at how she felt connection to the ocean, how she felt the salt of it in her sweat and tears. Just as we are connected with the earth, the earth’s water is one cycle of renewal. Rain is gathered in the skies as the oceans evaporate. Soon it falls and follows rivers and streams on its return to the sea. Our tears renew us; the Psalms talk about tears as seeds we plant into order to reap a harvest of sheaves, which are the answers to our labor of prayer.
“Those who sow in tears shall reap with joyful shouting. He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, Shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him" (Psalm 126:5-6).
Part of that harvest is an energy or power for living life well. 2 Corinthians 12:9 is well known and quoted: “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then am I strong.” The cross holds space for me to be broken and empty. Every other religion from Catholicism to Hinduism is a list of rules, a path that its followers must walk. Christianity is the only voice that cries out in this wilderness of ‘doing’ that our God has already done. Buddha’s last words were: “Never stop striving.” Christ’s last words on the cross were: “It is finished.”
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