What You Keep Just In Case
“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.””
— Matthew 19:23-26 (NIV)
Many people in that world read wealth as a visible sign that God approved of someone, and hardship as the reverse. So the men listening were not worried about the wealthy. They assumed nobody had better prospects than that. Moments earlier a wealthy young man had walked away sad rather than sell what he owned. An ordinary household had no pension and no insurance behind it, so what you owned was the closest thing to a safety net anyone had. The camel was the largest animal people there handled day to day, and the hole in a sewing needle was about the smallest opening in an ordinary house. Putting one against the other named something that cannot be done at all, not something merely difficult. The popular story about a low gate in the city wall comes from writers many centuries later, with no trace of it in sources from his own time. Straight after this, one of the men following him says out loud that they left everything behind. Nobody gets in because of what they own, but God can bring anyone in.
You probably keep something in reserve, just in case. One person keeps money they never touch, another a cupboard of spares. Someone counts on parents who would take them back, or on one friend who always picks up. For someone else it is a second set of tools or dishes, or a freezer stocked for a month nobody touches. None of it is wrong to have. It turns heavy the day it quietly becomes the thing keeping you safe. Jesus said no amount of it buys a place with God, and that what people cannot do, God can.
Give away one thing you were saving
- 1Before tonight, find one thing you own two of, or something you bought in case and have not used in a year, and tell one person today that it is theirs. A message, a call or a note all count, and your part is finished the moment you have said it, whatever they answer.
- 2If no person comes to mind, take that thing out of the drawer or shelf where it has been sitting, put it in a bag by the door, and write on the bag which day this week it leaves. Before the day ends, check that the bag is by the door and not back on the shelf.
God, I hold on to more than I need, and I know why. Some of it is fear about what is coming. I cannot make myself safe by storing things up. Help me let go of one thing today and put it in someone's hands. Thank you that a place with you was never something I had to afford.
Today I am letting go of one thing I am saving just in case.
Was the needle really a narrow gate in Jerusalem?
There is no trace of such a gate in sources from his own time. That explanation first appears in commentators writing many centuries later. The image in the text sets the largest animal people there handled against about the smallest opening in an ordinary house, and that is the point: it cannot be done.
Why were the men listening so shaken by this?
Many people then treated wealth as a visible sign of God's favour, though that was not the only view around. An ordinary household had no pension and no insurance, so what you owned was the closest thing to a safety net. If the people who looked most secure were in trouble, they could not see who was left.
Does this mean I have to give away everything I own?
The passage sets no threshold for what you may keep. Today it is one thing: something you have two of, or something you bought in case and never used. Decide who gets it, say so today, and before the day ends make sure it is either out of your hands or bagged by the door.