On a cold winter night in late December, a Greyhound bus worked its way along the winding road close to the ocean. The Greyhound was almost halfway full, people trying to go back to their home town for the holidays, but the number of people that were on the bus does not matter just as the fact that the bus crashed doesn’t matter. Although the action of the bus hitting the patch of ice just right causing the bus to flip, leads to our important part.
Some called it a miracle, the small fact that only two people died, while others saw it for the tragedy that is death. The proper loved ones were called and one woman was buried in a church cemetery.  She was a nun. The other woman was left in the morgue with no one to claim her. All that was known about her was her profession, a call girl. It is the women that hold the importance of this story, even if no one alive knows what happens next.
One woman went to heaven while the other to Hades. In heaven the disciple known as Simon Peter and the apostle Paul met the woman who stood on the verge of entering heaven while Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer waited at the gates of Hades for the other woman. When the women saw their respective resting places and who waited to greet them, they smiled.
“I knew it. I’ve worked all of my life for this,” they almost whispered in awe. The woman in heaven broke down in tears and fell forward.  Simon Peter caught her and raised an eyebrow in question at Paul, who could only shrug. In Hades, Hitler looked the woman as she steeled herself for her fate and he muttered something in German that wasn’t very polite as he and Dahmer both grabbed an arm to drag her to where she belonged.
Both women knew about what God had promised to them, what awaited them as retribution for their actions on earth. One woman thought that she was good enough, but her pride and her superior judgement became her literal downfall while the other woman’s true intentions and good heart led her to where she belonged. The hooker turned to Simon Peter as they walked through heaven and asked him, “What more can I do to serve the Lord?”
Simon Peter replied, “You have done well child, enjoy your reward.”
In Hades the nun turned to Hitler and sneered, “Surely I merit a better lackey than the likes of you.”
Dahmer laughed as they rounded a corner to where the nun would spend the rest of eternity paying for her sins.  “In here, I assure you that you will always get exactly what you merit.”
Back on the earth a man reads the newspaper; he is what is considered a righteous man according to the scripture. When he sees the article about the crash and the dead women, he does not jump to the same conclusions that many other believers have, that they will someday meet the nun in heaven and should pity the hooker who burns in Hades. Instead, he says a simple prayer for the families of BOTH women; he hopes that they may find closure in the tragic deaths. Then he says a prayer for the women, accepting that he does not know them, even though their job descriptions are noted in the article. The man knows better than to try to understand a person by who they appear to be. Someday this man will meet the hooker, though when they met in heaven he will not know it; all that he will see is another believer who did what they could to follow their God. The nun in Hades will look for the hooker, never believing that she was a better woman than that of a nun, proving that she is where she belongs, despite her outward appearance.