Thinking Anew: Dispatches from the narrow way that leads to life

I have lost my engagement ring and I’m really sad about it. It was a beautiful ring, truly the most beautiful ring I have ever seen – an emerald with three tiny diamonds on either side of it – and I lost it somewhere in the house. For months I have looked everywhere, down the sides of the sofa, behind book cases, under the beds. It must have been hoovered up or thrown away by accident. Perhaps it’s languishing in landfill in China. I don’t think I’ll ever find it now.

Sometimes when I lose something and spend ages searching for it, I think about the words of Jesus: “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” It is a disconcerting passage because it sounds as if Jesus is intentionally making himself really hard to track down, but actually I think he’s just being very specific. We can spend a long time looking for something, but unless we look in the place where that thing actually is, we’re just not going to find it. The amount of time and effort I have put into searching for my ring has come to nothing, because I did not look in the right place.

“Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Christians experience Jesus as the alpha and the omega, the Way, the Truth, the Life, the two ends and the middle of it. If we seek God without looking to Jesus, we are like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. Christians believe that if we turn away from Jesus we are turning away from God; that if we are searching for God we will be led to Jesus; that as we look to Jesus we will find God. If this seems too narrow, we know from the whole sweep of scripture and from Jesus himself that there is nothing narrow about the love of God. It is said that you will never look into the eyes of someone God does not love.

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Many people who have stepped on to the narrow way of Jesus describe a sense of homecoming. Philosopher John Moriarty described it as ‘returning to his native language’

And yet, in another sense, love IS narrow. If it is true love it will be particular and personal and focused and faithful, willing to suffer for us, longing for the very best for us, delighting in our company, inviting us to trust and yield to the space and grace we are offered in Christ. It is in the commitment to this love that we can paradoxically find our freedom, as echoed in the words of the Collect for Peace: “O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom...”

Many people who have stepped on to the narrow way of Jesus describe a sense of homecoming. Philosopher John Moriarty described it as “returning to his native language”. Writer Paul Kingsnorth noticed that “everything was unchanged, and everything was new”. T S Eliot realised that at “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”.

[ Thinking Anew: God’s presence permeates our every moment and guides our every journey ]

[ Thinking Anew: As flesh and blood we make sense of faith ]

I suppose this leads us back to where we started, in looking for God where he may be found. Jesus has promised us that we will find him if we search for him with all our hearts. Yet, strangely and wonderfully, at that very point it is the experience of many that it is the living Christ who is pre-emptively pursuing us. The narrow way mysteriously unfurls to encompass the whole universe.

Chesterton remarked wryly: “Nothing is more amusing to the convert... than to hear the speculations about when or whether he will repent of the conversion... The outsiders... think they see the convert entering with bowed head a sort of small temple which they are convinced is fitted up inside like a prison, if not a torture-chamber. They do not know that he has not gone into the inner darkness, but out into the broad daylight.’