The open door

April 10, 2007

By Marlene J. Chase

When I was a child, the first thing I did upon arriving home after school was yell for Mom.

“In here!” she’d respond from a door always open.

Mom was never too busy to listen to my eager reports of the day’s adventures. Often, I wanted nothing; I just needed to know she was there.

One day I came home and found a closed door and no answering voice. I scoured every room of the house as well as the front and back yards looking for some sign of her. Many panicky moments passed before I found her note on the refrigerator door. She had gone to the hospital with my brother who had become suddenly ill.

I waited at a neighbor’s home until Mom came. I was quite safe, but I’ll never forget my anxiety and sense of hopelessness at the sight of that closed door.

“I am the door,” Jesus said. “If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved” (John 10:9, NKJV). God’s Word explains that sin closes off the connection between God and man, leaving man outside the door of fellowship with Him. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life” (Romans 6:23). God stepped into our hopeless situation and opened the door once again, so that we could pass from death to life.

Sin keeps us out. But God never shuts the door, even when we leave Him standing in the cold again and again. Like a loving parent, He calls our names and responds to our slightest inclination toward Him. He comes running to draw us back into His intimate, loving circle. “See,” says Jesus, “I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it” (Revelation 3:8).

Marlene Chase lives in Rockford, Ill.