WTH

Driving back to Georgia from Chicago, one gets to spend a good deal of time on I-65. Now no disrespect to those who live along this fine strip of Americana, but this road is dull as dishwater.  It’s flat.  It’s straight.  If Chevy Chase had fallen asleep at the wheel on this road in “Vacation,” he would have traveled a couple hundred miles before spinning into the hotel parking lot.

There are a good number of farms along this highway.  Some of the farms have billboards in their fields.  Some billboards advertise the type of seed they are using.  Some are rented out to one of the restaurants located at the next exit.

Some billboards are homemade, with tributes to the local football team or maybe a Bible verse to catch your eye.  We passed one, painted entirely black, with giant white letters that read, “HELL IS REAL.”

HELL IS REAL.

That’s it?  That’s what you’re going with?  You have one opportunity to maybe catch someone’s attention, spread a little gospel love as they’re traveling 80 miles an hour past your property, and you’re going with HELL IS REAL.

Some people believe Hell is flames and snakes.  Some people believe Hell is the separation from God, and therefore, something that can be experienced here on Earth.  Some don’t think it exists at all.

Whether or not Hell exists is not the point of this post. But if you have one opportunity to share your faith with someone, and what you choose to go with is HELL IS REAL, I don’t think it’s going to be very effective.

There are a couple hundred things I would say about God before I got to this issue.  The first and the thing I say the most frequently is this.

There is nowhere you can go where God’s love is not with you, and there is nothing in this world or any other that can separate you from that love.

Now that’s an awfully wordy billboard, so maybe I’d just go with…

LOVE WINS.