Doubt padlocked one door and
Memory put her back to the other.
Still the damp draught seeped in, though
Fear chinked all the cracks and
Blindness boarded up the window.
In the darkness that was left
Defeat crouched, shivering,
In his cold corner.
Then Jesus came
(all the doors being shut)
and stood among them.
Have you ever been in a funk–one of those times when you’ve been walking along fine, experiencing great hope in the Lord about something, but all of a sudden that hope just disappears? (Rhetorical question) Your thoughts just swirl around you. You’re not able to concentrate on the truth. Your thinking at the moment is not helpful, to say the least?
Christ Appears to the Apostles Behind Closed Doors (Duccio)
Often our thoughts are like a crowd of people talking together in a room whose doors are shut, and because of the setting of some hope that had a bright sunrise, it is a sorrowful time.
There may be love, understanding love, all around us, and yet we may be needing some word of life in our own soul, something that would do what only the Divine can do. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6.68).
One day lately, when feeling like this, I took my New Testament, and it opened of itself at John 20, and the first words I read were these: “The same day at evening . . . when the doors were shut . . . Jesus came and stood in their midst, and said . . . Peace be with you. And when He had said this, he showed them His hands and His side.” It is all there–the shut doors (for we cannot say aloud all that fills our mind), the dreary evening, then the risen Lord, and peace. (Amy Carmichael, Edges of His Ways, pp. 131-2)
My prayer for you today is that the Lord may enter through any of your shut doors . . .
Witnesses to Hope 