Friday 27th September
Read Matthew 7:13-14
“‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (NIVUK)
Wouldn’t it be great if we could go to a supermarket and only have to make a choice between two things! All those options and choices just vanish away, the confusion that arises when there are so many slight variations on essentially the same product. Yet even if we are able to narrow the choice down to just two options, that does not make it any easier.
I often stand in front of the milk fridge with a decision to make. I take students to visit local dairy farms and understand what it takes to produce milk in this region. I know the farmers. I have raised some of their poddies. They supply milk to Norco. When I stand in front of the milk fridge though I have a choice to make. The narrow choice, with only two ‘racks’ contains the local milk. The wide choice, with nearly 30 ‘racks’ contains milk from elsewhere. One milk is clearly more popular than the other. One suspects that if the ‘racks’ were the same price there would be no decision to make. Do I choose the easier way and go with the crowd or do I take the costlier path? You would have to check my fridge to find out!
The concluding passages in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount all speak of ‘two’s’. Two paths, two trees, two disciples and two houses. At first glance this seems like a simple choice, a binary decision. But as we will discover it is one of the hardest things we will ever do.
