A few years ago I read, with a group for the church, Dante’s Divine Comedy. It was one of the more difficult reads I’ve ever plowed through. The poem has three parts (each with multiple cantos): Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.

In Canto 3 of Inferno, Dante passes through the Gates of Hell, which bear the ominous description “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

This line came to mind as I was preparing the sermon last week on Hope. Why is there no hope in hell?

Because God is not present.

Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, “They [those who do not obey the gospel] will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”

All of that sounds dark and depressing. But consider the corollary. If hell is a place of no hope because God is absent, then where God is present, there is hope.

And where is God present? Consider Psalm 139:7-12,

Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

You cannot outrun God’s presence; you cannot, in this life, find yourself in an irredeemable, hopeless situation. Where God is, there is hope.