“Go in through the narrow gate, because the gate to hell is wide and the road that leads to it is easy, and there are many who travel it. But the gate to life is narrow and the way that leads to it is hard, and there are few people who find it.”
— Matthew 7:13–14
I often return to this passage when I think about learning, struggle, and growth—not only as a believer, but also as a teacher.
When I was in Class 5, I was struggling with a particular chapter in my studies. Every evening, my dad would sit with me and ask questions from the lessons I had studied in school. It was our routine. But one evening, things didn’t go as usual. I could barely answer anything, and the frustration got the better of me. My eyes filled with tears, and before long I was crying.
My dad noticed immediately. He stopped asking questions and simply asked, “Why are you crying?”
“It’s too hard,” I said.
He looked at me for a moment—calmly, almost thoughtfully—and then said something that has stayed with me for the rest of my life.
“What isn’t?”
“Nothing is ever easy. You just have to do it.”
At that moment, I didn’t fully appreciate what he meant. To a ten-year-old child, the chapter felt like an impossible mountain. But time has a way of changing our perspective. The very topic that once felt overwhelming is now something I can understand effortlessly. What once felt like a struggle has become second nature.
Now, standing in front of a classroom as a teacher, I see that same moment repeating itself in the lives of my students. There are days when a lesson confuses them, when an exercise seems too complicated, when they feel like giving up before they even begin. And almost instinctively, they say the same words I once said: “Sir, it’s too hard.”
In those moments, I am reminded of that evening with my father.
Learning has always been a kind of narrow gate. The easy path—the wide road—is to avoid effort, to give up quickly, or to say that something is simply “not for me.” But the narrow path requires patience. It requires practice, mistakes, and the courage to try again.
What I have come to realise, both as a student and as a teacher, is that difficulty is not the enemy of learning; it is often the doorway to it. The things that shape us the most are rarely the things that come easily.
Perhaps that is why the words of Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount still ring so true today. The path to growth-whether intellectual, personal, or spiritual- is rarely the easiest one. But it is the one that leads somewhere meaningful.
And so, whenever a student tells me that something is too hard, I quietly remember my father’s words and the wisdom of that scripture.
Because sometimes, the hardest paths are simply the narrow gates that lead us to who we are meant to become.
Image source: Chat GPT
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