Doors …

Imagine yourself, sitting in your office. You have defined responsibilities, you have your co-workers’ respect, you are the person that they come to when there is a question in your area of expertise. You are invited to brainstorm when fresh insight or new ideas are needed.  You now decide to go to the break room for a cup of coffee.  You rise from your desk, and you leave your office through a door.  Ten minutes later, you return through the same door.  To the same office, the same job for the same employer.  You have the same responsibilities, and you enjoy the same respect from your management and your co-workers.  The door you enter is the very same door that you exited ten minutes earlier.

Let’s change the situation.  It is September.  You have graduated from high school back in June.  You have also celebrated your eighteen the birthday.  You live in your parents’ home and occupy the same bedroom where you have slept since middle school.  Your current part time job is insufficient to pay the rent, if you were to rent the same room from a stranger. In addition, the only transportation available to you is your parents’ automobile.  They make the rules; you are expected to be home by midnight. 

At some point, you enlist in the military and, on a given morning, you rise early; your mother drives you to meet the recruiter. That morning, you and your mom walk through a familiar door.  It is the door that you have been entering and leaving since middle school.  It is the door to your parent’s home, where you were expected to be … simply … “the kid.”

Now, four years later you return.  You have attended a technical school and you are reasonably proficient at a trade.  You have made every decision relating to what will happen in your free time each day for the past four years.  You have taken responsibility and you have taken risks.  You are driving your own car and possibly have a job lined up in a distant city … one that is sufficient to support you and pay the rent.  You get out of the car, and you walk up to the door.  Is it the same door that you walked out of four years earlier?  You are returning as an adult and the game has decidedly changed. You have been trained, tried and, in many ways, proven.  Your dad can’t expect to tell you to be home by midnight.  Your high school bedroom, while familiar, is going to remind you of another life, one that has ended; the dreams that you had in that room are now, at least in part, reality. In summary, your parent’s home doesn’t impose the same restrictions upon you that it once did.  Technically, you are about to go through the same door, but it doesn’t lead to the same thing.

A married man enjoys a modest home and has both the love and respect of his wife and children.  Daily, he walks through the door of that home and off to his job. In the evening, he returns to the same love and respect.  The house may be mortgaged but, to his family, it is home.  His wife serves as both his steady lover and a successful homemaker.  This home represents privacy, stability, and security.  Now, let’s assume that our head of household falls under the influence of the single crowd at work.  He begins to stop by a local watering hole each evening.  There, he has a few drinks and maybe shoots some darts or plays a bit of pool; shortly, he begins to fit right in.  At the same time, he arrives home to warmed-over dinner, kids that are sleeping and a wife that is fretting. Soon, he tires of her fretting. She’s nagging too, because his “single lifestyle” is having an impact on both the family budget and his responsibilities at home base.  He becomes dissatisfied …  she becomes dissatisfied. Before long, he packs his clothes and moves in with an acquaintance who is, of course, single.  Women flow into and out of the house … available women, and … what’s a guy to do? Meanwhile, the family struggles.  The finances are tight, snow isn’t shoveled, and the furnace needs repair. No one takes charge of the home spiritually; any sense of leadership is gone.  

Sometime later, our hero is once again ready for the comforts of home.  So, he packs his clothing and shows up at his family’s front door. Is it the same door?  Technically yes, but the trust that once lay beyond it … is missing. It now leads to people who don’t see the changed man that he claims to be.  No matter what the duration of his absence, the circumstances beyond the door have now changed … the impact long reaching … perhaps life long.

A Christian believer strays from his faith.  Satan is expert at making emptiness look both good and desirable.  Genuine, grounded, experience has been abandoned in favor of people with no faith in any god, and no faith in him.  He quickly learns that his new companions cannot “keep the faith” either, particularly in interpersonal relationships.  There is no trust, there is no brother or sisterhood.   Eventually, he admits to his emptiness and through some breath of the spirit, he begins to move back toward a spiritual anchor.  One day, he again steps through the door of God’s house.  Things have changed.  He is older and he is, at best, a visitor. The crowd that keeps this church running is both hot and tight.  They have been there since their very first meeting in a rented storefront.  He frets; unable to find a lost sense of grateful inclusion. The truth is, that even here … in God’s house … one returns through a different door than the he or she went out.

Allow me to close with this thought: This last example doesn’t mean that you cannot find a mission after returning to the church … this entire website is part of mine.

Doors …