Eye of the Needle | January 3, 2010

One of the joys of my mid-day lap swim workouts is catching glimpses of the skies above. Lucky for me, I not only live in Hawai‘i but swim in a 50-meter outdoor pool near the back of a gorgeous, green valley. Each time I turn to breathe, I can see the ridges of the mountains and, above them, skies that almost always float with clouds being pushed forward by winds blowing them out to sea. When a friend moved here recently from the mainland, he commented, “Hawai‘i is the cloudiest place I know.” That struck me as odd—at first. I always thought of Hawai‘i as having clear, blue skies, forgetting about the puffs of white cotton that do always dot our skies, that bring sudden sprinkles of rain that we shake off within minutes and keep our islands green, that filter the burning rays of an otherwise unrelenting tropical sun, that play across the skies in innumerable shapes, sizes, wisps, towers, sheets, and layers, and which at the end of the day lay themselves out as canvas for the setting sun to splay its palette of colors before dipping below the horizon. I suppose that because clouds always fill our skies, I’ve come to see the clouds as sky itself, inseparable. I don’t know the sky without them.

  Last week when I was swimming, I caught a hole in the clouds — not an ordinary hole, mind you, in which the cloud had thinned or separated or was being blow apart. This was a triangular hole seemingly cut out of a thick wad of cumulus cloud, more akin to a keyhole because of its geometric symmetry and the uniformly deep frame around it as if someone had purposefully rendered it to showcase the vivid blue sky that lay behind. Was I to look at the cloud or the hole? The composition of the clouds or what lay beyond, what was more fascinating— the foreground or the background? I suppose I couldn’t have the one without the other.

  And then it seemed as if I were peering through to something beyond, heaven perhaps. Not a keyhole, but a peephole. Not a peephole, but a portal, an opening, a way in. I was on one side, and something lay, waiting beyond, on the other side.

  And that is so God. God is always all about openings. That’s all he ever does in our lives. He creates openings for us to walk through and see the other side, his side, a side we can’t comprehend unless we step through to the other side.

  I think of the eye of the needle…
And a rich young ruler. Here’s the story told in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 18:18-27):

 

A certain ruler asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.'" "All these I have kept since I was a boy," he said.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, "You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth. Jesus looked at him and said, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Those who heard this asked, "Who then can be saved?"

Jesus replied, "What is impossible with men is possible with God."

You know, for years I always got caught up in this story with the camel that can’t get through the eye of the needle. It’s the same place those who heard Jesus first get caught up, too—in trying to push a big, fat, hairy, stubborn camel through the eye of a needle. Ridiculous. And Jesus says it’s easier to do that than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. So in my mind’s eye, I leave the rich man outside the gates of God’s kingdom—I don’t even try to get him through—because Jesus says there’s an easy way to thread a camel through a needle. I’m unloading the camel, squishing it, flattening it, experimenting with hooves in first or the bristly hairs atop its nose.

  And I forget two things, no three:
1.    It’s impossible with men
2.    It’s possible with God
3.    The eye of the needle

  The first means, I should just forget even trying. The second means that because it’s impossible and no man or woman can do it, God can. And the third simply reminds me that the reason the camel can get through is that the eye of a needle is a hole, a passageway – a passage, a way.

  The eye of the needle reminds me that when I have no way, when I can’t find a way out of a situation nor into a better place (God’s kingdom), I have to look to God to show me a hole, the very sliver of a hole through which he can draw me. When God creates a way, anything is possible.

  It’s called grace—being given access to the humanly impossible because God makes divinely possible. Grace, in other words, is simply God showing us a hole in the clouds, God making a way, God opening the door when we thought it slammed shut, God unlocking the gate when we thought our entrance was barred. It’s God reaching through from his side and tearing our worlds apart so that we can enter the Kingdom.

  It’s amazing what you can think of while taking a breath while swimming.

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