CLOSED TOMBS AND CLOSED DOORS

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”  (Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV)

“Resurrection means the worst thing is never the last thing.”  (Frederick Buechner)

Frederick Buechner moved to New York to become a writer, only to find he couldn’t write a word. He tried to go into his uncle’s advertising business but wasn’t tough enough. He tried to join the CIA but didn’t have the stomach for it. He fell in love with a girl who did not fall in love with him. He writes, “It all sounds like a kind of inane farce as I set it down here, with every door I tried to open slammed on my foot, yet I suppose it was a kind of pilgrim’s progress.”

It was door closing because he was disappointed in options he wanted. It was progress because it led to him finding, or being found by, God. And in his faith he has written words that have inspired millions of others in their faith. But that door never could have opened if many other doors hadn’t closed first.

-- John Ortberg in “All the Places to Go: How Will You Know?”

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OPENING SHUT DOORS

Myth: “Some doors are so closed, not even God can do anything about them.”

Actually, locked doors are kind of God’s specialty… If God can open the heavy door of a sealed tomb, no circumstantial door is too closed to Him. Consider what happened after the Resurrection:

“When it was evening… and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked… Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’… A week later His disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” (John 20:19,26 NRSV)

The doors of our lives are not closed to God. He has the power to enter into our circumstance and grace us with His presence.

-- John Ortberg in “All the Places to Go… How Will You Know?”


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OPENING THE DOOR TO A NEW FUTURE

Jesus said, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand -- repent and believe the Good News!”   (Mark 1:15)

Jesus did not say, “The Kingdom of God is at hand -- regret and believe the Good News!” The difference between regret and repentance is the difference of an opened door to a new future.

God’s doors, like His mercies, are new every morning.

Frederick Buechner writes, “The sad things that happened long ago will always remain part of who we are just as the glad and gracious things will too, but instead of being a burden of guilt, recrimination and regret that makes us constantly stumble as we go, even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead.”

-- John Ortberg in “All the Places to Go… How Will You Know?”


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