Hell

Keller quotes CS Lewis:

"Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others...but you are still distinct from it.  you may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it.  but there may come a day when you can no longer.  Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine.  It is not a question of God "sending us" to hell.  In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud."

Interestingly, right after God brought His people out of Egypt they drifted into this very error of "grumbling".  The Hebrew that gets translated "to grumble" in Exodus 15 when the people have just been saved from the Egyptians and "batized" in the crossing of the Red Sea (Ref:  1 Cor 10:2) occurs in the Bible for the first time at that location (according to a word search in Hebrew).  We Christians must heed the warning.  It is so easy to turn to Christ with initial joy and singing like the Israelites did at the Red Sea.  And then, like the Israelites, it is easy to grumble against God at the first time trouble comes our way - acting like the rocky soil in Jesus' parable. 

May we heed the insights of Keller and Lewis as they put forward things found in the Bible.  May we Christians be quick to be like Job - worshipping the Lord in the good times and the bad.  And may we be trusting, like Job, so that when we stumble we still remember that "our Redeemer Lives" (Job 19:25) and we will see Him face to face.

Let us put off grumbling against the Providences of the Almighty.  Let us put on a heart of trust that all things work together for (the eternal) good for the Lord's people.