Christmas Lights On The Square Of A Local Winery Tasting...

Over Thanksgiving break, I sat in a local winery tasting room downtown and watched as the Christmas lights on the square outside turned on for the evening. Melissa Junken, my high school sophomore English teacher, sat across from me sipping her own glass of wine. Her question—the usual-- of â€Å"how’s school going?† resulted in more attitude than I typically give. â€Å"I have to define salvation sometime in the next week... in approximately 6000 words.† It was a blunt statement. I could see the work looming ahead but felt separated from the ideas. I took a sip of my own wine before looking up. Her eyes were wide and she had put her hand on the table. â€Å"What?† I asked. I could feel her waiting for me to say more, or even more so, to show some†¦show more content†¦Hell? Absence of love? Was that hell? Is there hell? Am I saved? How does one gain salvation? Is it gained or â€Å"just there?† All of the questions I struggled to po nder in the earlier weeks rose back to the surface as I struggled to work through these questions on a more personal level. â€Å"What do you think it is?† Her question came sharply through my thoughts and I felt like a deer in the headlights. When I’m in class and speak, my face flames a bright red more times than not. I felt the same heat rise to my face in this moment. â€Å"I don’t know† I tossed out, lamely. We dropped the subject, and she poured us both another glass of wine. I have spent the last month trying to specifically define salvation in entirety. It is complex and complicated in ways that make the question often times more easily avoided or, when answered, over-simplified. In another conversation with Haley Patterson two nights later, she pointed out that we, in fact, do not have the ability to know the answer and as a result, there’s a level of impossibility to defining it. It was a comforting statement—one that made me feel that perhaps I wasn’t as lost as I believed. However, after some time spent mulling it over, I realized I couldn’t agree with it completely. I came back to my working definition of salvation and