The Doorway…

The room is cold and a little dark.  It is an uncomfortable place.  Your heart saddens as you realise you are standing the place called ‘this existence’. Sure, from time to time it is a place of hope, but it is all too often a place of quiet desperation.  It is all too often a place where a pervading sense of powerlessness steals our joy and our dreams.

Now picture a doorway into another place.  Written on the door in large letters is the word “Grace”.  Then under that word in smaller letters is written “God’s Empowering Presence”.  What might you expect to find on the other side of this door?

We live in a world in which we rely so heavily on human effort and attainment it can be difficult to imagine any other paradigm.  Even Christians can come from an Old Testament foundation of Law – which requires human effort to attain right-ness with God.  But there is another place perhaps too few have found.  The doorway itself is the underserved unconditional forgiveness offered to us by Jesus.  Yet the doorway leads to another place.  It is a place of new life.  It is a place of the empowering presence of a very real God.  To some it may sound ridiculous to able to live in the presence of God.  But it’s true.  To get there we must leave the old way behind and walk through the door… never to return.  And therein is the next surprise.  You won’t want to return.