“This is it? This is what everyone was so excited about?” I could scarcely mask my disappointment as we stared at the gaping mouth of the cave. Dark and foreboding in its depths, pockmarked and guano stained at its hundred meter’s high entry, I timidly surveyed the winding path downward into what seemed an inconceivable depth.
UNESCO World Heritage Site!
One of the most incredible natural wonders of the world!
One of the largest series of limestone caverns on earth!
Gleaming underground palace!
The hype had been overwhelming as we had passed through the visitor center to purchase our tickets. Yet, walking to the entrance of the cave, which had been sheltered by the hillside, I was shocked to witness the barren, eroded limestone entrance. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. It looked dirty and uninspiring.
The winds and rain had eroded the rockface while frequent hailstorms had pockmarked its surface. Hundreds of years of roosting Mexican bats had turned large swatches of the white limestone a putrid brown and black.
Another member of our crew remarked, “Oh, just wait until we can visit in the Autumn! Then, you can see the bat flights where thousands of bats swarm out of the cave over your head!”
That sounded about as cozy as the discolored pit! I contemplated just waiting at the entrance of the cave while the others trudged deeper. I could catch up on some reading and still say I had visited this “grand” sight. However, as I weighed the cost of my ticket in my hand, I shrugged and followed as the group descended deeper and deeper into the ground.
At first, the sparse foliage of the national park was mirrored by the stark rock walls inside. It didn’t seem grand at all. Scarred and dull, the cave entrance was great in height but shallow in the fantastic. But as I began the descent deeper and deeper into the caverns, I was greeted with something altogether different and new.
Winding deeper down, we came to an impasse in the rock wall, save for a small, narrow opening. The leader of our group, nonplussed, stepped through the narrow opening, ducking his head beneath the low-hanging gray stone. It was narrow, tight, and I could just feel my lungs struggling to breath as I followed through the restrictive passageway, nicking my forehead in the process.
I imagined explorers a hundred years ago pressing into the opening, seeking the next thrill and next glory. In the moment, I was not sure I could have been that intrepid!
Once through to the other side, however, I gasped in amazement as a huge room, hundreds of feet high met my eyes. It was as if another complete world existed below the rugged landscape, and I had entered a gleaming, glistening palace of otherworldly dimension.
Glistening pools of crystal clear water, like glass, met me on either side as I listened to the drip-drop of water somewhere, echoing across the space. The carefully placed lights within the cavern lit up immense stones, formed by eons of dripping water, laced with limestone deposits. They stood as formidable giants in the room as we traversed through.
Reaching another tight squeeze, I was less hesitant this time and quickly stepped through the opening, eager to explore the inner confines. Even greater wonders existed in this cavern! Rainbow-hued stalactites—some 80 to 90 feet long—dipped down into the room from the ceiling. Glistening in the lights, the sheer magnitude of those great, yet shapely boulders was not lost on me. What if one fell?
Equally as remarkable were the stalagmites rising from the cave floor below us as we walked around the outer edges of the room. Shiny and gleaming from the moist cavern air, they stood as titans amidst the tiny tourists who had now hushed in wonder.
Carlsbad Caverns was everything the brochures had said it was and more. The key, however, was that I had to embrace that cave. I had to enmesh myself in the tunnels and progress into the depths to find the glory of that place, and I had to brave the constricted, narrow, scraping passages that separated the outer courts from the inner.
Recently, my studies in the Word of God have led me to the book of Matthew, specifically chapter seven, verse thirteen.
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” – Matthew 7:13 (KJV).
Key to this passage is the specification that the gate be strait and the way narrow. The Greek term translated as “strait” here actually means narrow, but it is not as simple as we try to make it during a cursory reading of this text. Strait means so narrow as to cause difficulty!
A similar rendering is found in the Hebrew in Numbers 22:26, speaking of Balaam and his donkey entering a strait place where it was impossible to turn to the right or left. If you recall, he had reached a point of no return. It was a place his shoulders would have rubbed against the side of the rock on either side as he pushed through the passage.
The strait gate is an uncomfortable place. A tight place. You cannot progress through a strait place without being indelibly marked by it. In fact, spelunkers, cave divers, and mountain climbers, when approaching what in times past were called strait passages, will remove every bit of excess equipment and gear so that they can fit within the confines of the strait place.
It is a place of constriction, but, note, just as in the caverns, it is that constricted opening that keeps out the elements and the winds of doctrine that erode the glory inside!
To progress through the straits of our walk with God, Hebrews 12:1 admonishes us to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us.” Why? Because to access the inner courts, to access the glory, we have to enter a place that the distractions have not soiled and the winds of false doctrine cannot blow.
It is a protected place, a deeper dimension of the supernatural that only opens itself to those willing to press through the confines of the straits.
Multiple times in my life, I know I have faced the strait place. Call it what you will. At times, we call it a valley or a storm, but when God decides to lead you through an open door that can only be breached by deeper consecration, more fervent commitment, and the laying aside of distraction, sin, and carnality, be assured you are entering a strait gate! There is glory on the other side!
The constriction of the strait gate is designed by God—not man—for a purpose. Yes, it causes conflict in our flesh. Yes, it irritates human nature.
Like Jacob’s wrestling match with the theophany of God, the strait place—true to its Greek definition—is one of personal struggle where we must relinquish the addictions, habits, traditions, and even comforts of our past in a bid to reach the glory!
And that’s what I want, more than anything… to move, as 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, from glory to glory!
Like a cave diver, I have learned that those seasons necessitate stripping off my pride, and laying down the talents, skills, and attributes of self that I have long relied upon. I must lay aside the habits, the entertainments, and the things I have taken for granted as normal, twenty-first century living. Sometimes the things we carry become so enmeshed in our identity that we have to scrape them off like barnacles on a ship’s hull. I have found, however, that when I endure the scraping, rather than leaving me insufficiently prepared and bereft, God frees me to venture deeper in my walk with Him, and I progress one more step beyond the veil toward the miraculous.
2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
The tight place chisels away at our carnal features, one glory at a time, until we reflect the image of the Master. The beautiful part is that, as we become more and more like Him, deeper and deeper depths of God’s provision, His wisdom, and the miraculous are opened.
I can only imagine the glory on the other side of this current strait gate and, so, I embrace the struggle that sheers off the flesh in favor of revealing the divine. As for me, I purpose in my heart to “enter ye in” at the strait gate, no matter how much self I must forsake because, like explorers of old, I have an obsession with the glory!
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