The Rim of the Wheel
W. Carl Ketcherside
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It is in our nature, I think, to seek for simple illustrations with which to explain those things which we cannot really define. Perhaps the word "explain" is a poor choice. We generally use it in the sense of making something clear to others. Actually, we are striving to understand, and that which we understand we do not so much explain, as we share our understanding with others. Our feet are still fast in the clay even as our minds roam among the clouds, and while we are heaven bound, we are still "earthbound." In this state of things the metaphors, similes, and parables, which we use to try and capture the signification of heavenly attributes are always inadequate. The nearer to heaven we approach, the more inadequate do they seem, and when at last we reach the goal, we will find that the things we here regarded as intangible are the only tangibles, and that which we could not define is the only reality.
For this reason, you will pardon my apparent childishness, when I tell you that in my meditation upon the relationship of persons and things in the divine plan and purpose, my mind always reverts to the figure of a wheel. I suspect this is because I realize that a wheel derives its strength from both its center and its circumference. The spokes are drawn together at a common focal point, the hub, and they are closer together there than at any other point. But they are held together by the rim, and this circumscribes the length to which they may extend. They are widely divergent at the rim, but this very divergency when properly confined is what gives strength to the whole.
The hub represents faith in Christ Jesus, that point at which we surrender self and become one in him. We are fastened together not by mutual attraction for each other but by our universal need for a Savior. At this juncture, "there is no difference, for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:22, 23). It is only because the spokes are incorporated in the hub that they sustain any relationship whatsoever to one another. They may previously have come from a dozen trees in a dozen scattered forests. They are one only because they have been brought together by a power greater than their own. Without the exercise of this power upon them they would have continued in their natural state.
The rim is love, the only factor which makes it possible for us to work together
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