Doors

Today’s Reading: Hebrews 7:18-10:39

As your eyes become more accustomed to this light you begin to look around you and see that this room is filled with doors of all different shapes and sizes. A skinny green door named healing, a large round door labeled prosperity, as far as the eye can see there are doors in this huge room all leading to various things. But this door, the smallest door in the room painted yellow and just the right size for you catches your eye. You walk up to it and tentatively reach out your hand to tenderly touch the gold lettering at the top “Miracles”. You catch your breath as you think of the Red Sea parting, the manna falling like snow, the Jordan River separating, heavenly armies surrounding earthly enemy armies preparing to attack men of God, the sun standing still in the sky to bide our ancestors more time, a widow pouring oil from a jar that just keeps flowing and filling containers until she runs out, a fisher of men fishing and catching a fish with money in its mouth. Could it be… a door with all these things and more besides that behind it? You look to Jesus to see what He has to say and with His smiling eyes He nods, this door is all yours. Everything behind it has been waiting for you to discover it, to come and step over the threshold of possibility. You excitedly reach out and turn the knob but it won’t budge! Why? And that’s when they appear. Doubt and Discouragement, little more than wisps in the wind, voices in your ears they whisper back and forth putting thoughts into your head making you think you are the one thinking them. “Jesus didn’t actually say that these miracles were for me.” “I’m not like Moses or even the prophet’s widow, who am I to deserve something as grand as a room full of miracles?” “I’m not special enough to have God intervene in my life in a miraculous way.” “I certainly haven’t done anything worthy of a miracle being performed in my life, that’s for sure.” As this barrage of thoughts floods through your brain like an all out attack on your morale your head begins to droop and you slowly turn away from the door, convinced that it wasn’t meant to be.

You look to Jesus thoroughly discouraged and disappointed in yourself for even thinking that He might love you that much to give such a gift as wonderful as that. You think “Sure, He loves me enough to die for me, and maybe even enough to help out with little things in my life here and there, but to change my life completely; to turn everything bad in my life around? Probably not, that stuff has to be earned right?” You slump down on the sofa next to the door and put your head in your hands and say “What was I thinking? God doesn’t really do miracles today. That door has been closed for a long time.” At this Jesus comes unglued, “Who told you that?” He says with a tone you’ve never heard in His voice before. He can tell that someone has been feeding you lies and He’s about to get down to the bottom of it all.

(To be continued…)