“Eye of the Needle” Car Wash

Scripture
“How difficult it is for those who have great possessions to enter the Kingdom of God! A camel could squeeze through the eye of a needle more easily than a rich one could get into the kingdom of God” (Luke 18:24,25 Phillips)

 “Eye of the Needle” Car Wash

Apparently, I have post traumatic carwash syndrome. Every time I go through a car wash, I remember my first time 50 years ago. I was a newly minted sales guy with a dirty company car, so with my new expense account in mind I went to one of the then new-fangled automated car washes. Somehow, I didn’t get the car lined up properly – so my car squeezed through the car wash, but the back left tire got destroyed in the process. I’m still careful lining up my wheels as I enter car washes.

I wonder if a modern-day parable might go – “It’s easier for a Mack truck to get though a car wash than for a self-confident person to experience the kingdom of God.” Car washes need us to have low profile vehicles, mirrors tucked in, loose attachments removed otherwise we may emerge with a clean car missing a mirror or windshield wiper.

Jesus talked about how hard it is to squeeze through a needle’s eye if you are a camel or rich in goods and credentials. Lately I’ve been thinking about the needle’s eye as a tool the Good God uses to scrape away a lot of stuff we rely on for identity but can make us insensitive to the Spirit.

Like going into the constriction, darkness and turbulence of a car wash and coming out into the light clean and unencumbered, we can find the Spirit’s scalpel scraping away the accumulation of things that confine us and distance us from the heart of our God.

A Prayer for Today

Gentle God, sometimes we get caught up in the accumulations of life and create false senses of our own self-sufficiency and rely on this to feel secure. Help us trust you that in the events of life, many painful and difficult, you are cleaning us up and dusting us off to be freer to love you and serve those who come across our path. Help us treasure some of the turbulent moments when we discover all we have is you and your love as our safety, and that is enough …. For Jesus’ sake