Hallway
The classic analogy that says God opens doors for us to walk through is rather intriguing to me.
I suppose it stems from the first time God closed a door, the door of the ark. That must be the precedent from which it all came. It must have been. However it happened, though, we humans have been talking about God opening and closing doors for hundreds of years.
Now, the analogy is a perfectly innocent one, and it has its place. Very often God does make it clear that a certain turn our lives could take is not the one He’d have us follow. Very often He brings us to the threshold and points out a broad vista that we can just barely see through the doorway — and then pulls us back to point us in a new direction. Very often He clearly shuts doors and opens them.
But we have to be careful. So often we get so caught up in finding God’s purpose for the rest of our lives, and finding it now, that we miss what God is doing in our current situation. It’s as though we reduce God to some sort of cosmic door guard whose sole purpose is to get us out of one situation and into another as quickly and efficiently as possible.
See, God doesn’t always shut a door in our lives just so He can immediately open another one.
Sometimes He keeps us in the hallway for a while.
We have to realize that God doesn’t only have a purpose for our lives — the broad, sweeping brush strokes that make up our destiny; He also has a purpose for our days. There is not a single moment of each and every day that God did not create and give to us intentionally.
If you’re in a season of waiting today, a season that’s full of unanswered, frustrating questions — keep waiting. Keep waiting.
But don’t stop working. God created the hallway with just as much care as the rest of the house. He has you there for a reason. Never forget that.
