Imagine trying to drive your brand new car in the garage with just tiny gap between your shiny new paintwork and the brick wall. That was the challenge faced this week by the pilot of the Royal Navy’s latest aircraft carrier, as she left the dockyard and headed out into open water for the first time. At 280 metres long and 70 metres wide, she’s the largest warship ever built for the navy, and the mouth of the dockyard was only 70cm wider than the ship, and the riverbed only 50cm below her keel.
Well its not just physical spaces that sometimes need carful negotiation, but spiritual ones too. Jesus once addressed the issue of how hard it can be for those with material wealth to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, saying that it would be easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle. Now there’s real challenge!
It all comes down to having a very clear focus on where we want to be. The pilot of HMS Queen Elizabeth was utterly focussed on getting the new ship through that tiny gap. In the same way Jesus warns us not to become so distracted by the things of this world that we end up missing the entrance to eternal life.