Closed Doors/Open Windows
Closed Doors/Open Windows by Rev. L. John Gable
August 16, 2020
I know we are all familiar with the saying, “When God closes a door, He opens a window.” It is not Biblical, you won’t find it in the Bible, but it is consistent with Biblical truths and reflects a Biblical worldview. It is consistent with our understanding that the God we worship is alive and active, engaged and involved in human affairs, including our own; that He is sovereign and in control when, and particularly when, we are not; that God is good and loving, faithful and trustworthy, even when life and life’s circumstances seem to work against us and even against what we perceive to be the good purposes of God. This saying is consistent with a favorite verse of many of ours, one I have heard many cite particularly during this time of pandemic when so many of our plans have been thrown out the window, when there is a veil of disappointment and uncertainty hanging over nearly every commitment and conversation, when we feel utterly out of control, even more so than we normally are; that passage being Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose”, which translated in to everyday language sounds kind of like, “When God closes a door, He opens a window.”
I think it will be interesting, in years to come, as we look back on this pandemic experience to see what we will have learned and how our lives will have been changed by it. What will we have learned about self-care as well as care for our neighbors in this time of isolation? What will we choose to take with us from this time of quarantine (new habits and disciplines) and what will we choose to leave behind (like all the stuff we’ve cleaned out of closets which hasn’t been touched or used for years)? What will we look back on and see, from a different perspective, of how God has been at work using these experiences to shape and form and change us, hopefully for the better? Admittedly, some of the lessons we will have learned have been difficult ones, but I am also convinced that some of what we are learning we will one day look back on and be grateful for having been forced to have the experience by the “closed door” we know as Covid-19.
At the turn of the 20th century when cotton was king the boll weevil crossed over from Mexico into the southern states destroying vast acres and the fortunes they held. Farmers were forced to diversify their crops, adding soybeans and peanuts. They learned to use their land to raise cattle, hogs and chickens. As a result, many more farmers became prosperous than in the days when the only crop was cotton. So grateful were the people of Enterprise, Alabama, for that particular “closed door and open window” experience that in 1910 they erected a monument to the boll weevil, the inscription reading: “In profound appreciation of the boll weevil and what it has done to herald prosperity.”
Each of us can look back on our own lives and see “boll weevil-like”, “closed door” experiences which we didn’t see coming, which rocked our world and the plans we had made for ourselves: when we didn’t get the job we wanted or were unexpectedly terminated; when we didn’t get in to the college of our choosing or lost out on an opportunity because it came too late or too soon; when he didn’t say “yes” or she did say “no”; when disappointment or disease or even death came suddenly or unexpectedly laying waste to all of the plans we had made for ourselves and the future. I could go on, but each of us can call to mind an experience or a time when we had to determine through what lens we are going to view what is happening to us: through the lens of “the whole world is against me, including God, OR the lens of “When God closes a door, He opens a window”? In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl reflects on his experiences in a Nazi Concentration camp. The question he poses is why some endured the intolerable and others simply gave up, he writes, “Everything can be taken from a (person) 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.” The same is asked of us when we are faced with “closed doors”. Do we fold our tents and go home or do we start looking for “open windows”?
Our passage from Acts this morning comes right off of our lesson last week about the great showdown at the Council of Jerusalem when the decision had to be made as to whether a Gentile had to become a Jew before becoming a Christian. Recall, after “no small dissention and debate” it was decided that Gentile believers did not have to follow Jewish law, including circumcision given a very few exceptions, and with that the evangelists of the day, Peter, Paul, Barnabas and others hit the road to share the Gospel message with Gentile and Jew alike. Recall, as we left our lesson last week, Paul and Barnabas, good friends and traveling companions, decided to part company. Barnabas and John Mark take off for Cyprus while Paul decides to do a reunion tour and revisit all of the churches he had planted earlier, all in modern day Turkey, this time taking with him Silas and soon after inviting a young man named Timothy to join them.
The addition of Timothy gives us a good insight in to Paul’s purpose and character. Paul was working on his succession plan, someone not only to take John Mark’s place, but one who could/would continue the ministry after him. Timothy was the perfect candidate, a young man, well-respected, the son of a Jewish mother and Gentile father, so able to understand and bridge the gap between both of the populations they were going to reach. Later Paul will write of Timothy referring to him as his “beloved and faithful child in the Lord”, saying there is no one like him, who shares his same mind and concern. The “door which closed” with Barnabas and John Mark became an “open window” with Silas and Timothy.
All was going well in their travels. They found the churches doing well and growing in numbers, but then they hit a roadblock. We read, “They went through the regions of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the Word in Asia.” Seemingly undeterred, we read on, “When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them, so passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas.” Not knowing the region as Luke did doesn’t really matter, what is important for us to hear here is that they went from east to west, from west to north, some suggesting that they traveled up to 2000 miles, and at every turn they were “blocked, hindered” by the Holy Spirit, seemingly God closed every open door to them.
What was happening here? Paul and his companions were being faithful to their calling and trusting that God was leading them. Surely they had prayed about where they were to go and what they were to do, so why the closed doors? We too have prayed the prayer asking God to bless our plans, haven’t we? “OK God, I’ve got it all worked out, all I need You to do is put your stamp of approval on it!” And then when our plans don’t work out we wonder why God doesn’t always agree with MY plan for my life? And how did they know it was the Holy Spirit who was closing the doors and redirecting them? Did Paul hear a voice, like he did on the road to Damascus? Were they and their message rejected by the people or the authorities in these places? Did they just get a gut feeling, “Let’s get out of here, I don’t have a good feeling about this place”? We don’t know because we aren’t told, but we too have experienced such “closed doors”. The question is, do we look to see God’s hand in them? In part our response may be shaped by how we view the opportunities which come our way. Are they of God’s doing or our own?
The Romans painted the picture of Opportunity as a beautiful woman with long, braided hair in front and bald-headed in the back. If you meet her as she comes toward you, you can grab on to her locks and hold on, but if you let her pass, she is gone forever. Perhaps we too look at missed opportunities in much the same way: lost forever. Shakespeare’s Brutus urges us to not lose life’s ventures and be left in the shallows. Recall his saying:
“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads them to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries.
On such a full sea we are now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.”
Speaking of this same kind of remorse over lost opportunity Alexander Graham Bell once wrote, “When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.”
In those situations we often find ourselves wondering “What if” and “If only”: If only I had… or hadn’t… What if I had…or hadn’t…? The kind of questions which invariably lead us not to answers, but to frustration and futility.
This is the situation Paul and Silas found themselves in after all doors closed to them and they found themselves in Troas, a small city on the coast of the Aegean, literally the end of the line. It was there that “their extremity became God’s opportunity” when Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us!” Macedonia, really? The Gospel had never been preached there before. Macedonia was in Europe and the Gospel message had never left Asia. Could it be heard and received there? Was it even possible that people would hear and believe the Good News about Jesus there? Macedonia was the land of Alexander, the one called the Great, and his father Philip, both of whom had designs to conquer the world and “marry the east to the west” whereas Paul’s vision was the win the world for Christ. Had their closed doors suddenly become an open window?
In one of his early songs country music superstar Garth Brooks tells of running in to his old high school flame one Friday night at a football game. He quickly realized that she wasn’t quite the angel he remembered in his dreams and that he wasn’t all that she remembered of him, so it seemed, then the chorus begins, “Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers. Remember when you’re talking to the Man upstairs, just because He doesn’t answer doesn’t mean He don’t care, some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”
Let me close with one other story, this one suggested to me by Glenn McDonald. It is the story of a young man named Augustine and his mother Monica’s prayer for him. “As Monica saw the sails vanish over the horizon, her heart sank. If God had answered her prayers, that boat never would have left its moorings in North Africa 340 years after Christ and headed for Italy. Her son Augustine was aboard and she was certain he was headed for disaster. Augustine was brilliant, but he was also rebellious and self-assured. His immorality had repeatedly driven Monica to her knees as she begged him to turn to God, but he rebuffed her at every turn. Ultimately he decided to set sail toward greater adventures in Italy. Monica spent a sleepless night pleading with God to block his path. “Please let him stay here in Africa so that one day he might find and serve you!” she prayed, and all she heard was silence.
But God knew best. In Italy, the future Saint Augustine came under the influence of Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, who mentored him into a spiritual life that would ultimately bless and transform all of Christian history. Later in his life Augustine reflected on his mother’s sincere prayer that night and all those that had preceded it. He was grateful that God had chosen not to answer them. Perhaps Garth was on to something, “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”
Having been blocked by the Spirit from going to nearly every other region of their choosing and finding themselves in the dead-end port of Troas, they heard the invitation from the man from Macedonia to “Come and help us”, so they set sail, first landing on the island of Samothrace, then on to the mainland at Neopolis, and the rest as they say is history. Following the wind of the Spirit all of those closed doors became open windows. From Neopolis they went to Philippi where they met a woman named Lydia who, along with her whole household, received the Gospel message and were baptized, in Europe of all places. From Philippi to places like Thessaloniki and Athens and Corinth and Ephesus, eventually to Rome and then across the Greco-Roman Empire, centuries later to the nations of Europe and Great Britain, eventually then to the United States; the Gospel message being passed from parent to child, from neighbor to friend, from generation to generation, for centuries until it came to your hearing and mine, all because when God closes a door He opens a window and the work of the Spirit goes on.
Prayer:
Lord, give us eyes of faith to trust You even when we do not see You and hearts of faith to follow where You lead us even when we do not know the where of Your going. Give us the confidence of faith to trust that You are at work in our lives, even as You are in world, and grant us the privilege to be useful in Your grand purposes. All to Your honor and glory. Lord, hear our prayer….