February 25, 2006
a saturday pause
I stand by the door.Though not completely in line with this statement, I still resonate with it. I think it comes pretty close to how I understand my place in the church.
I neither go too far in or stay too far out,
The door is the most important door in the world -
it is the door through which folk walk when they find God.
There's no use my going way inside and staying there,
when so many are still outside, and the, as much as I,
crave to know where the door is.And all that many ever find
is only the wall where the door ought to be.
They creep along the wall like blind men,
with outstretched, groping hands,
feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door,Yet the never find it...
so, I stand by the door.The most tremendous thing in the world
is for people to find that door - the door to God.
The most important thing anyone can do
is to take hold of one of those blind, groping hands,
and put it on the latch - the latch that only clicks
and opens to that person's touch.
People die outside that door, as starving beggars die
on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter -
die for want of what is within their grasp.Others live, on the other side of it - live
because they have found it,
and open it, and wals in, and find God...
So I stand by the door.Go in great saints, go all the way in -
go way down to the cavernous cellars,
away up into the spacious attics -
it is a vast, roomy house, the house where God is.
Go into the deepest of hidden casements
of withdrawal, of silence, of sainthood.
Some must inhabit those inner rooms,
and know the depth and heights of God,
and call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is.
Sometimes I take a deeper look in,
sometimes venture in a little farther;
but my place seems closer to the opening...
So I stand by the door.- Samuel Moor Shoemaker
We all grope. We all flail around to one degree or another. Even when we find that door, sometimes we do not know when or how to open it. Perhaps we don't trust it. Perhaps we don't recognise it, our hands are so rough and insensitive from running it up against the rough bricks and mortar.
Posted by tripp at February 25, 2006 09:07 AM