Whispers and knocks

There are things in life that I take for granted. Take keys, for instance. Have you ever thought about how much they add to the convenience of life?

If you want to really appreciate your keys, just do what Karen and I did the other morning: Lock yourself out of your dorm at 8:15 on a Sunday morning when nobody is awake to open the door for you. Oh, and you should also leave your phone inside your dorm so that you have no way of contacting the inside world.

Sunday morning, Karen and I helped our third roommate bring the last of her things out to her car. As we watched her drive away, we realized that we had just landed ourselves in a difficult predicament.

First we tried knocking on the front door, but to no avail. We then decided to knock on our friends’ window because we knew that someone in the room was awake, but there was no answer. The back door was a futile idea, as was looking in every single window for any sign of life. So we returned to our friends’ window.

I happen to know that their window is broken, so I thought we could just climb in the window. The worst that could happen would be that we would wake up our friend who was still sleeping. I slowly started to lift the screen, but before I could do anything else the blinds shot up and we saw our two friends, one at the window and the other cowering in the corner. Apparently, our sleeping friend had woken up to our whispers and knocks and thought we were murderers coming in through the window to kill her in her sleep.

Hearing it from her perspective, I can understand why she would be afraid of our whispers and knocks. She couldn’t really hear what we were saying through the window. She was afraid of what she might find if she opened the blinds. As humorous as this story is, I couldn’t help but think of how we do the same thing to God.

Now, I am in no way comparing Karen and myself to God! Maybe this is a bit of a stretch, but doesn’t God knock on the windows of our hearts only for us to be too scared to answer? We jump to the conclusion that something we are not prepared for is about to happen. That something is going to enter our lives that will hurt us or damage our lives in some way. We leave our blinds closed because we don’t want to see what is out there. If we just open the blinds, we’ll see that there is nothing to be afraid of.  God’s whispers are not meant to scare us, they are meant to cause us to respond to him. To open the blinds and let him inside our hearts.

Sunday morning I was taught two lessons. Both are critical life lessons and should be taken very seriously: Do not be afraid to open the blinds of my heart when God is whispering and knocking, and never forget to bring my key with me if I’m outside the dorm before 9:00 a.m.