Difficult Passages

Sometimes it's not the obscure or difficult to comprehend passages of Scripture that disturb me.  No, it's usually those that are pretty plain that I just don't like, passages that are difficult.  This week, I'm spending my mornings in 2 Thessalonians and I ran across one of those passages.  Paul writes in 1:6-9: "For it is indeed just of God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to give relief to the afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.  These will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might..." (NRSV).  Now I love the part of this passage that says that God will give relief to the afflicted.  That sounds like Good News.  It's easy for me to swallow.  But, if I'm honest, I don't like the part about eternal destruction of those who don't know God.  I confess...I'm a wannabee universalist.  I would love nothing more than for everyone to be able to spend eternity with God.  I can't imagine anyone wishing eternal destruction or separation from God.  Yet, as much as I'd like to, I can't gloss over these words and pretend they don't exist or that they aren't real.  Instead as I type I am in awe once again that God is God and I am not.  As much as I don't like difficult passages, this is God's Word, God's story, God's universe not mine.  And so my prayer this morning is that difficult passages would move me to prayer, would move me to love, would move me to live my life in such a way that people would see Jesus and the life he is inviting us into.