With the military genius Napoleon Bonaparte active in France, the British public deeply distrusted the French mining engineer Albert Mathieu’s 1802 plan to dig a tunnel under the English Channel. Why not hand the keys to the kingdom directly to their greatest rival for world power? Who wanted to tunnel under the moat that had stopped all invaders for nearly 800 years? That deep distrust hung in the air through two World Wars until 185 years after the initial proposal, in July of 1987, The Channel Tunnel Act received royal approval and passed into law.
But uniting the two historic enemies would take more than royal approval — it required a phenomenal engineering effort to create a 23½-mile-long railroad route beneath the sea. In fact, three parallel tunnels were proposed that would require a phenomenal 125 miles of tunneling. When they were done, the two main train tunnels were paralleled by a service corridor and joined by numerous ventilation tunnels and escape routes.
Engineers planned the route through a bed of impermeable and strong chalk marl that ran all the way from England to France. What they didn’t fully appreciate was the effect there would be from the 3,000 or so bore holes that had been drilled through the layer of chalk by engineers over the course of nearly 200 years. Each one provided an entryway for seawater to come pouring into the hole being bored by the massive Tunnel Boring Machines. These monstrous 800-foot-long machines with a diameter of over 23 feet chewed steadily through the rock sending back a steady stream of “spoil.” The third busiest rail line in England was needed to ferry workers to the job site, to haul in the 9-ton sections of super-concrete that reinforced the passage, and to haul out the tons of spoil. Over 100 locomotives and 1,000 railroad cars worked tirelessly to support up to 15,000 construction workers. Finally, in May of 1994, the great Channel Tunnel, affectionately nicknamed the Chunnel, was opened for business. The cost? One proposal from 1856 had suggested a cost of about 11 million dollars. The 1987 project was supposed to cost billions, but 80% cost overruns brought the final bill to nearly 14 billion dollars.
A More Expensive Connection
Perhaps you’re aware of a deeper gulf of fear and suspicion than the one between the French and the British. People have long suspected that God wanted to move in on “their turf” and steal their supposed freedom to do whatever they feel like. They’ve erected a moat of doubts, theories and excuses in an attempt to keep their Creator at “a safe distance.” But the fear, uncertainty and doubt has been entirely one-sided. We humans have walled ourselves off from a God of love who has a deep desire for intimacy with us. He prepared a plan to break us free from the sin that kept us away from Him and that chained us up on an island of suspicion, anger, covetousness, lust and fear. “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
God’s plan of salvation wasn’t without cost to Him. But unlike the Chunnel cost estimates, God knew exactly what price He would have to pay to buy back people from the slavery of sin. When the great Chunnel was planned, a group of investors in a coalition of 10 banks worked out the complicated financing so they could get a return on their investment. God’s plan involved an infinitely greater cost — the death of His Son on the cross of Calvary. “When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son” (Romans 5:10). At the end of His time of suffering on the cross, the work to buy back sin-scarred people was complete. Now all who believe on Jesus Christ can enjoy Him forever. “We also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:11). But those who refuse to pass through the escape route from the isolated island of sin that God has opened at such tremendous cost face “the blackness of darkness forever” (Jude 13). Which will it be for you?