It was a typical Sunday morning, and I was hurrying through my routine so I could get to Church a little earlier than usual. This would be the last Sunday service before our Pastor and his family would be gone for two weeks. I wanted to make sure we were prepared, and I looked forward to seeing what kind of blessing GOD had instore for us.
That’s when everything went wrong! I was distracted while making my coffee and decided to warm it up. I heated my coffee in the microwave for 30 seconds but noticed it was bubbling when it came out. I was in a hurry, and decided to stir it so it would cool off before adding milk, but the scalding hot coffee surged out of the cup, covering the back of my fingers. The contact was less than a second but that was enough to burn my skin.
My fingers felt like they were on fire, but I managed to clean up the coffee that had covered the counter, ran down the cabinet and onto the floor. I didn’t want to upset my wife and keep her from going to Church too. I held my burning fingers under running faucet water, but it wasn’t cold enough and didn’t help much. I spread mustard on the burns and that helped a little. I told my wife I burned my hand and she saw the mustard and asked if I was going to stay home from Church. I said yes, I had to, and I called our Pastor to let him know what happened. I searched the internet to see what I could do to ease my pain and discovered really cold water would stop the burning and aloe would help heal the wounds. Thankfully it was good advice and helped.
One thought that ran through my mind while I was suffering was, I don’t want to get burned again! It also gave me a taste of how horrible burning in hell must be! Though I pulled my hand back from the scalding hot coffee and reduced the damage, there will be nowhere to pull back to in the lake of fire. There certainly won’t be any cold water to relieve my pain or aloe to soothe my burning flesh (Luke 16:24). As bad as my pain was, it didn’t compare to being burned in fire. My pain seemed to last a long time, but the worst of it lasted minutes and was mostly gone within an hour. Yes, I will suffer some discomfort for a few days, but the pain of burning in hell will never end (Mat 25:46)!
Another thing it reminded me of is to change my ways or suffer the consequences. If I had been more careful with the hot liquid, I probably wouldn’t have been burned. I learned years ago that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16 KJV) and “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev 20:15 KJV). That’s why I asked JESUS to forgive me of my sins and be my LORD and Savior! I’m still learning many other lessons GOD is teaching me, but I won’t be cast into the lake of fire to pay for my sins. If you will “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12 KJV), in other words, learn your lesson now and accept JESUS, you too won’t have to burn!
Wayne Lance (2023) – That’s Good News to Share!