A Closer Walk
A hearty thank you to my granddaughter Emily for filling in for me while I took a break from writing “A Closer Walk.” Thank you, Emily!
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“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us,” Helen Keller, 1880-1968. Miss Keller lost her sight and her hearing after contracting a disease at 19 months old. Modern doctors believe she likely had meningitis. Helen could neither see nor hear. At age seven she met her first teacher and lifelong companion Ann Sullivan. Miss Sullivan taught her language including reading and writing. Helen makes the point that if we are focused on one door that has been closed we likely will be unable to see a new and different door that has been opened for us.
“Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door,” Coco Chanel, 1883-1971. Miss Chanel was a fashion designer and founder of the House of Chanel. She and her House ruled Parisian haute couture for six decades. She was “Faithful to her maxim that “luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.” (Sourced from Britannica online) One of life's lessons we should learn is when to move on. When to go a different direction. Remember, closed doors often help us to find the correct path. Some examples: the company we work for might decide to close the local facility where we work; our employer may decide to transfer us to a different department or area; a restaurant where we enjoyed eating might close; our children or grandchildren might decide to move their family farther away; and so on.
So how do we know when a door has been closed? The most obvious reason is because it is no longer there or no longer an option. Life can be a series of paths. When one door closes then that path is no longer available. When we come to a point where the path before us is the only option, then that must be God's will for our life. Make sense? Our God is all knowing and all powerful. He can and does open doors. He can and does close doors. A door is merely a gateway to a particular path. A closed door indicates that the path we have been on is now no longer available. So our role as followers of Christ is to find the next door and thereby the next path. If we pray and ask for God's help in finding the correct door He will help us. How do we know He will do that? “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know,” Jeremiah 33:3 NASB. Here is the same verse from the Amplified Bible. “Call to Me and I will answer you, and tell you [and even show you] great and mighty things, [things which have been confined and hidden], which you do not know and understand and cannot distinguish.” Call out to our God, and He will answer us, and even show us things we did not know. Plain and simple.
What if we are not able to find any door or path? Take heart. There are times when our God causes us to pause. This may result from an injury, or an affliction or disease, or any number of other reasons. The Apostle Paul was forced to take a pause because of being confined in a Roman prison. What did he do during this time? He wrote letters to some of the churches he had started on his missionary journeys. We know them as the Bible books of Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, who was a personal friend of Paul. Talk about making good use of the time! These pauses cause us to learn. Learn what? It could be any number of possibilities. Even a multitude of possibilities. We might begin by examining whatever we believe our God has been trying to teach us. Or maybe our Lord has been working with us on a certain area of our life. Our God is always and ever shaping us into the likeness of His Only Begotten, the Lord Jesus Christ.
But what about the next door or the next path? When our God opens a door for us, we must have the courage to walk through it. Why? Because our God is taking us somewhere. Leading us down a particular path of His own choosing. Taking a different path can be scary, or anxiety causing. But we should move forward onto this path and see where it takes us. If we choose not to go through an open door we will never find out what lies ahead and what our God had in store for us. What is at the end of the rainbow, so to speak. Different paths and personal growth are a natural part of life. Still sleep in a crib? Still play with Hot Wheels or Barbies? Still play high school sports? No, of course not. We've moved on from that. And what did we find? Careers, marriage, family, and so on. You know, grown-up things. But to attain those things we had to move on.
Occasionally this path is meant to lead us to another path. And sometimes there are difficulties. Remember our ancestral pioneers coming from the east? They had to cross the Mississippi River to get into Missouri. When leaving Missouri first thing they had to do was to cross the Missouri River which was the “Gateway” to the west. If they were heading to Oregon they had to cross the Rocky Mountains, which rise to twelve thousand or more feet above sea level. Pike's Peak rises to 14,115 feet. But these had to be crossed to get to Oregon. Otherwise they were homesteading in Kansas or eastern Colorado.
We know that life is not without change. We travel different paths to reach different places. But eventually, we will arrive at the place our God desires us to go. And with His help we will accomplish the things He desires us to accomplish. Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!