February 12, 2013
The Door
From my kitchen window
I can watch my neighbor’s dogs in her backyard. They are playful with one
another, but more often than not I see them standing or lying at the back door.
It’s interesting to watch what they do in order to get their owner’s attention.
The younger dog gives a single bark and then cocks an ear to the door to hear
if he is getting a response. The older one does a semi-scratch with one paw on
the door as though giving a nudging reminder to the owner that he is still
waiting. The Lord said, “Here I am! I
stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I
will come in and eat with him, and he with me.” (Rev 3:20 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----I think I like Jesus standing at my door. I don’t mean I like Him standing outside knocking. But everything that comes into my house must pass through the door. The way I beat manic depression was by realizing that most of the sub-conscious cause of my inner distress was the result of the previous five years or so of my conscious thoughts and feelings. Then, if I could very carefully require all my conscious activity to serve the truth and attend love, in five more years my sub-conscious would once again be stable and realistic, I reasoned. I don’t know if I was right about the part of the sub-conscious swinging us around as having been made of the last five years of conscious activity or not. But it worked. After five years of attention paid to finding and applying the truth and love to every idea and feeling which crossed my consciousness, manic depression was no more. Ever since that gloomy August day of 1977 which began my attentiveness, I have considered my conscious mind to be the doorway into the house of my whole heart and mind. Whatever passes through there ever since has been required to meet muster or turn around and leave.
-----Now, it didn’t take much pondering to strike upon the realization that neither I nor anyone else is completely skilled in truth or love. In fact, we all fall far short. When I was eighteen, I reckoned that the time we had become sure we know the truth is the time we began our own breed of deceit. Truth is far greater than we can ever learn in a lifetime, and far more intricate than we can gather with a thought. Therefore knowing truth is more a process of discovering truth than it is the result of having discovered it. I consider our new life in Jesus Christ as the beginning of the results of discovering truth, because that life grows continuously into love from one degree of glory to another, continuously carrying us deeper into His likeness (even though I‘ve ventured barely beyond its surface.) So the truth we now know is always open to further clarification, even to a bit of pruning. Humility is important in this world of deceit. But that eternal world to which we go is the place where truth will be complete and discovered. No deceit will be there, such that all things will be naturally true.
-----In the meantime, I need a truth filter at my door more capable than am I. I can’t imagine a better one than Jesus standing there, knocking at every idea and feeling to see if they answer towards truth and love. “Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life.” Prov 4:23
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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