Let’s go back to our road analogy. We talked just a minute ago about how the Interstates and Parkways are so much easier to travel upon then some of these one-lane country roads that we have around here. They are wider...they are better paved....and there is more room on them for error...they even give you a big shoulder on the side of the road to use to avoid trouble or to stop on should you have problems....they are so much easier to use...and we get totally get that concept from the history of these roadways.
According to a website called About.com "On July 7, 1919 a young army captain named Dwight David Eisenhower joined 294 other members of the army and departed from Washington D.C. in the military’s first automobile caravan across the country. Due to poor roads and highways, the caravan averaged five miles per hour and took 62 days to reach Union Square in San Francisco.
At the end of World War II, General Dwight David Eisenhower surveyed the war damage to Germany and was impressed by the durability of the Autobahn. While a single bomb could make a train route useless, Germany’s wide and modern highways could often be used immediately after being bombed because it was difficult to destroy such a wide swath of concrete or asphalt.
These two experiences helped show President Eisenhower the importance of efficient highways. In the 1950s, America was frightened of nuclear attack by the Soviet Union (people were even building bomb shelters at home).
It was thought that a modern interstate highway system could provide citizens with evacuation routes from the cities and would also allow the rapid movement of military equipment across the country.
Within a year after Eisenhower became President in 1953, he began to push for a system of interstate highways across the United States."
Kind of makes sense...doesn’t it...if you were fleeing from a nuclear attack or anything else...would you want to do it on an interstate or on a one lane country road...what did we see when Hurricane Katrina struck...even the interstates were full.
Let’s tie this in with the metaphorical meaning of these words that we are looking at...there are two ways to live our lives...there are two ways to view this world...the easy way by traveling on the interstate or the hard way...on the country road. Now we see the word picture that Jesus is giving us and we can apply it to the metaphorical aspects of what he is saying. Now...we can answer this question of "why is it so hard to find Heaven"....and the answer is that isn’t hard.
(Scripture reference Matthew 7: 13-14)