Most of us could say, “That’s not quite what I was planning for my life.”
Like some bible characters we could not have predicted where our lives would take us. In the scriptures we see God’s unmistakable guidance through a burning bush, a fleece, a voice, a dream, an angel. God can also lead us in no less significant ways, like doors.
For some of us a door may be locked or hidden or a door has meant rejection – ‘They shut the door in my face.’ OR an ‘open’ door can be a choice of boundless opportunities to learn, to do something worthwhile or discover purpose and satisfaction. God can open a door for you in any circumstance!
In Viktor Frankl’s book The Meaning of Man he tells about how Nazis imprisoned him in a concentration camp. They took away his profession, confiscated his possessions, mocked his dignity, and killed his family. They locked him in a cell with no way out.
A room without an open door is a prison, but he found a door that his guards knew nothing about: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Frankl discovered that doors are not just physical. A door is a choice.
As author John Ortberg says about Frankl, “Frankl found that when his circumstances had closed every outer door to him, they revealed to him the doors that matter far more—the doors through which a soul can leave fear and enter into courage, leave hatred and enter into forgiveness, leave ignorance and enter into learning. He discovered that his guards were actually more imprisoned – by their cruelty and Ignorance and foolish obedience to barbarism—than he was imprisoned by walls and barbed wire.”
Some people learn this and become free; some never see it and live as prisoners.
There is always an open door for us to choose! God provides open doors for us to make wise choices. Are you ready for that door? How will you discern which door to walk through and if it is from God?
I invite you join us in the blogs for the answers to these questions.
