Recently a teen friend, Tania Sithole, said something to the effect of, "When one door closes, God opens another. You just have to have faith". I started thinking about how we react to closed doors.
Life is never a stone wall with nowhere to go, even though it occasionally looks and feels that way. The open door may not be directly in front of us on the path we were headed down, but it's there. It may be to the side, or we may need to back track a bit and try another path, but there's always an open door.
Some of us, though, have a tendency to stay at the closed door. We might keep knocking or ringing the bell. We might try to knock it down. We might just stare at it dumbly. Or fall down and weep. But we won't go anywhere until we quit worrying about that closed door.
Others just turn back, giving up all hope of going forward, or at least anywhere they want to go. "The door was shut, I'm doomed". Well, yeah, if you choose to be doomed you can be, but it's a silly choice.
And that's what a lot of us miss, that we do have choices. We can choose to demand that things go our way every time, and get nowhere we really want to go (unless we're self-centered to the point of absurdity), or we can choose to make the best of what shows up-- and to look around to see what's there.
While you're at it, you might want to choose to think about where all those open doors come from. Do they really just pop randomly out of an impersonal universe, or is it possible someone loves you and is offering you a way into something better?
3 comments:
WHERE'S THE LIKE BUTTON? :)
You can't see it? It's right next to the button that doesn't work.
Chris Horn replied elsewhere:
I dig it. A lot. "Life is never a stone wall with nowhere to go"...That's a great quote. There's been times where I've prayed for the Lord to SHUT doors!! I know, weird, huh? There's just times I have to say "Lord, you know I want this, and I can bull my way through things and make it happen...please put up BIG roadblocks if this isn't what you want for me." I think just admitting my own hardheadedness and willfulness helps me to see His will more clearly.
Excellent points (and attitude).
On the gripping hand, sometimes he really is leaving it up to us. As we grow, I think more and more the perfect will of God is for us to choose between two, three or even many doors, all of which can be awesome if we have the right motives, attitude, etc.
Post a Comment