Finding the needle's eye...

Over the last couple weeks, I have been going through everything I own, making decisions about what to keep, what to donate, what to sell at the biggest garage sale I've ever had, and what just needs to go into the trash.  It is an interesting experience to see your life reduced to piles of belongings which have meaning tied to them, but which, in and of themselves, are rarely considered.

I have found things I didn't know I owned shoved back in cupboards.  I have clothes that I wore 20 years ago and more, which have seen better days, and will likely never be worn again.  I have collected enough Tupperware that I could, as a friend put it, start my own dealership.  I am going through wedding gifts from almost 30 years ago, remembering the givers with fondness and affection.  I sort childhood toys and books, baptismal outfits and little boots, mementos created with loving care by adoring children who still believed Mommy could do anything.  How can I bear to part with any of these treasures?

But the time comes into every life when we must reduce some of the accumulation.  The belongings are no longer serving their purpose, and are, indeed, unused and in the way.  As I contemplated this mammoth task, Matthew 19:24 came into my mind.

"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  (TNIV)

This is an interesting statement, easily understood, at least superficially.  But it has taken on new meaning for me as I cull the unnecessary belongings from my life and try to determine what is essential for me to keep.  While many of the belongings enhance my life in a material way, they can also distract and detract from what is really important, taking my focus off the spiritual while seeking the trivial.

Those who have been through experiences such as flood, fire or other catastrophic loss have a clarity on this most of us never achieve.  It isn't difficult, when standing outside a burning home, to realize that having the right number of noses with you is more important than preserving a table or a chair or a television.  Yet most of us cling to our belongings as though they determine the value of our lives, or give us meaning.

As I have sorted through the cast off accouterments of a life I no longer lead, the underlying warning in the declaration made by Jesus became clear to me in a different way.  It's not the wealth that is the problem.  It's not even the things that wealth provides.  It's the seeking of those things, running after distractions and obsessions and temptations rather than seeking God, that will lead us astray.  Our problem, in short, is not in what we have, it is in what we cannot give up.  When we are more concerned with having the biggest house, biggest car, biggest family, or biggest bank account than we are with having the biggest faith, we lose sight of God.

Eventually thread frays and weakens when it isn't taken care of, and will no longer fit through the needle's eye easily.  When we allow the things of the world to pull us apart, to fray our faith, we will lose sight of God.  When we allow worldly desires to direct our path, we will miss the the tiny sliver of heaven that can be seen through that slender eye where we are drawn in to God's embrace.

The blessings of God are for everyone, but the poorest of his children on earth will have the place of honor in heaven.  That is the glimpse we have of how heaven will be.  Don't allow your thread to fray in the desperate search for something temporal.  The spiritual realm is where a Christian finds home, and it is in passing through the eye of the needle that we will ultimately find God.  There is no wealth that can compare to eternity with the God who created us.