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Evangelical

Bowels of Hell, Heights of Heaven: Preaching Dante Alighieri

May 30, 2011 by Daniel Harrell

Continued from Page 3

"Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things." Paul wrote, "For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." Imaging that day for himself, Dante wrote:

I saw, above a million burning lamps,
A Sun that kindled every one of them
As our sun lights the stars we glimpse on high;

And through its living light the shining Substance
Glowed out so brightly down upon my gaze
That my eyes dazzled and could not endure it.

O Beatrice, my sweet and cherished guide!
You said to me, "What overwhelms you here
Is a power for which there is no defense:

"In this One is the wisdom and the power
That opened up the path from earth to heaven
For which the men of old had yearned so long."

Just as lightning bursts out from a cloud
Because it so expands it has no room left,
And crashes to the ground against its nature,

Just so my mind, becoming more enlarged
At this rich banquet, broke free from itself,
And what it was, it cannot remember.

Page: 4 of 4

5/30/2011 4:00:00 AM

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About Daniel Harrell

Daniel M. Harrell is Senior Minister of The Colonial Church, Edina, MN and author of How To Be Perfect: One Church's Audacious Experiment in Living the Old Testament Book of Leviticus (FaithWords, 2011). Follow him via Twitter, Facebook, or at his blog and website.

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