Encouragement

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THE ROOM AND THE DOOR – A PARABLE

Imagine being in a room.

From the vista of my room I can see a lot of things. My room provides me with a variety of comfortable, practical and homey things. From the place where I sit in my room, and by barely moving my head, I can take in every bit of it. I see the furniture, my books, the pictures on my walls, the devices of my entertainment; it’s all there, just the way I have, through the years, accumulated and arranged the stuff in my room. Within my room my vista spans, unrestricted, to the limits of my vision. Safe, comfortable, practical, homey; I like my room.

Imagine a door.

My room also has a door; a door leading outside, with a glass panel and a curtain. From the place where I sit, my door provides a hint of what lies outside; but the view is blurred by the curtain and restricted to a few degrees of my periphery. Looking outside, I see a telephone pole, the blurry outline of a tree far off on the horizon, and a rather boring corner of a rather boring house across the street. If I believed the extent of this limited perspective, there would not be much that would ever entice me beyond the hominess and safety of my room. Reveling in the vista of my room, I would forever deplore the narrow, limiting, and probably dangerous world, which I perceived to be outside.

But doors are for more than providing hints; they are for walking through. Once having walked through a door, Oh the View! Once outside the door, the world behind me, which then seemed to be so wide, is suddenly so very narrow, and what was once so full is now so utterly empty. Beyond the door is a limitless world, full of a myriad variety. The world on the other side of the door literally teems with everything, which HE, in His love, has spent an eternity accumulating and arranging just for us.

Where is the room of your confinement? Where is the door of your opportunity? The things that “God has prepared for then that love Him;” these things that “the eye can’t see;” (I Cor. 2:9&10) these things are revealed by the door of His “Spirit.” Walk through that door today.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

Jonas J. Borntreger
5/26/2004

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