I spent my Saturday fishing. I hopped in my little rental, blue smurf car and headed to a lake that's about 20 minutes out of the city called Lake Keystone. It was supposed to be the warmest day of the MLK Day long weekend, so I decided to take advantage of it.
On my way to the lake, I had the radio tuned to a country station, and a song came on called 'Buy Me a Boat.' In the song, it has this lyric that says, "I keep hearing that money is the root of all evil, and you can’t fit a camel through the eye of a needle. I'm sure that’s probably true, but it still sounds pretty cool." Now, I'm sorry if this offends you, but I totally fall into the category of believing that country music has some of the simplest/lamest lyrics out there of all the genres. I still enjoy it, but still. The lyrics could get better, especially lyrics like this.
Anyway, the reason I point this lyric out of this song is because I thought it was super ironic that it was talking about threading something (a camel) through the eye of a needle, while I knew I was going to be practically threading needles all day fishing.
You see, when you fish, you break lines, and when you break lines you have to tie new hooks on, which is, essentially, the most difficult part of fishing. It's tedious, time consuming and takes a steady hand, especially the part of putting the line through the eye of the hook.
The line from the song is quoting a verse out of the Bible in which Jesus says it's easier for a camel (A CAMEL) to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. This description became a reality for me today as I spent a lot of my time tying hooks, rather than catching fish. It was surprising a lot more difficult than I'd remembered trying to get that tiny fishing line through that tiny hole of the eye of the hook. If it's that difficult to get something that small through an eye, I can't imagine what it would be like trying to get a camel through there. Fat chance of that happening.
I say all this to say, I totally see where Jesus is coming from. I totally get how hard it is to not rely on yourself and rely on God when you have loads of money. It's easy to rely on yourself when have the capabilities of gaining the world yourself. It would almost seem unnecessary to rely on God. It makes sense that wealth is that big of a barrier to knowing God fully. I hope it's a barrier that I can avoid, and I hope it's one the guy who sings the song 'Buy Me a Boat' avoids too.
-Cliff
Cliff's Note: On the whole, country music needs to work on its lyrics.