Hell is Real

Once each quarter, He and I travel north to the state captial to attend board meetings for a statewide advocacy organization. We generally leave home about 7 AM on Saturday morning and make the 1-1/2 hour drive north. Just a little ways north of town here, along I-71, out in the middle of the classically midwestern farm country between here and there, we encounter a series of billboards put up by some unknown, and clearly unfriendly bunch of religious zealots...

We've gotten so used to seeing them, over the course of the years, that we seldom pay any attention, and we almost never comment on their presence. They are weird, and sort of creepy, but not anything that really impinges on our world much -- except as a reason to remember that sort of world / society that we live in here.

This morning, as we were driving along, approaching this particular bit of farmland but still a number of miles south of it, we could see a giant plume of dark, black smoke billowing skyward. The dark trail of sooty smoke trailed off across the highway, to the west, for a good long ways. Clearly, there was something burning fiercely up ahead of us.

When at last, we drew up even with the place, just passing the first of the pugnacious billboards, we got a good look at the source of the acrid smoke, it became clear that the farmhouse was in flames -- blazing furiously and disastrously. There were emergency vehicles all around the place with all their lights flashing, pouring water into the inferno. It was also entirely clear that no amount of effort was going to save the place. It was entirely engulfed.

And the irony of that seems just too rich for words.

I hope that no one in the place ended up learning the answer to the question of WHERE they were to spend eternity this morning. I hope they are all safe and warm and well somewhere this night.

swan