According to Dante Alighieri in his Epic Poem, The Divine Comedy, inscribed above the gates of Hell is the phrase, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.” I don't believe that it's hard to imagine that there is a similar sign above the strait gate that opens up to the narrow way that leads to eternal life that reads, “Abandon hell, all ye who enter here.” If hell is the epitome of hopelessness, then our Savior Jesus Christ, Who is essentially Hope Incarnate, is the epitome of hell-lessness. When we enter in at the strait gate and walk the path of the narrow way, we abandon the idea that we are irredeemably fixed in our ways, unchangeable, unsavable, unloveable. We abandon the idea that we are impotent and helpless victims with no control over our destiny. We abandon the idea that our lives are ultimately meaningless and nothing we do matters in the long run. In short, once we enter the gospel path, we embrace once more the hope that, in our more hellish days, we feared was forever beyond our grasp. Because of our Savior's infinite Atonement, and because of our commitment to patterning our thoughts and our actions and our lives after His, we are drawn every day toward the adventure of figuring out how to make our lives better today than it was yesterday. We put our trust in God and act as if everything will work together for our good in the long run. We no longer give credence to Satan's lies, or a place for him in our souls, or get fooled into collaborating with him on his project to make our lives just as miserable as his. There will always be doubts trying to worm their way in, there will always be persecutions and torments being flung against us, there will always be those who see us putting our lives together and learning and growing and transforming the world around us into a more beautiful and truthful and peaceful and joyful place and they will be filled with envy and malice and do everything they can to stop or destroy us. But we can choose to abandon those hells and enter instead into the path of Hope.
