It’s 3AM.  The phone rings.  It’s the red phone, the crisis phone.  No, wait, it’s the Bat phone.  You pick up the phone, but it’s not a phone at all.  They are bells – church bells – and you’re late. And your shirt is twisted or something. You cannot get your arm through the sleeve and everyone is waiting.

Only you’re not late, you’re asleep.  You’re dreaming, just dreaming. You wake up with a mix of your chest pounding and relief. Then you laugh inside. The anxiety of your dream was just your brain sorting out a mix of experiences and emotions. Maybe you check to make sure your alarm is set, but you don’t get up to make sure your shirts aren’t twisted.

I hope you identified with my nightmare because you have had a similar experience. Let’s keep that in mind as we remember Joseph’s vital role with Jesus coming into the world.

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A friend texted me this week to ask about hell. It seemed a bit dark given the holiday season, but he had been looking at different Jewish, Christian and Muslim perspectives on it. I told him that while the history of interpretation is endlessly interesting and can be useful, I always start from the Bible, the scriptures themselves. We say, “The Word of the Lord,” because we hold them as coming from the highest authority.

Like heaven, the scriptural picture of hell is a mix of ideas and images. It’s not clear what is to be taken literally, symbolically and metaphorically. But it’s clearly the opposite of heaven and impassably distant from it. It’s clearly the opposite of Jesus, of God, of good.

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Times were hard for the prophet Elijah. For much of his ministry, he had to deal with King Ahab, who scripture describes this way, “And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him.” (1 Kings 16:30) “He did more to provoke the Lord, the God of Israel, than all the kings before him.” He married Jezebel, a Phoenician princess from Sidon who was really bad too, and built altars to the false god Baal.

It’s a fascinating story which you can read in 1 Kings, but to summarize, Elijah bravely and resolutely confronted Ahab and Jezebel and their awful blasphemy of encouraging false prophets and false gods in Israel. That’s a big no-no, by the way. Those confrontations are alongside demonstrations of God’s extraordinary provision and mercy, sending rain and feeding, even raising the dead.

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