lesson learned #6

“When one door closes, another opens; but we often looks so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”  Thomas Jefferson

 

Lesson learned:  don’t let the closed doors keep you from looking toward the open ones. 

 

I don’t know if Thomas Jefferson is the one who coined that phrase or not, but I’ve used it to describe the closing of one event/season in our lives and I’m sure that you have too.  But what I hadn’t seen until today was the rest of the quote and it maybe more true than the first part. 

 

Those of us who have walked through loss, whether it is a job, relationship, church, or death, find ourselves sometimes at the closed door.  Depending on the day, we might pound our fists upon it until our hands bleed, cursing it for closing just when it did.  Maybe simply give up looking anywhere else, because so desperately had placed all of our hopes and dreams on that open door that we cannot believe anything ever good can come from another door.    

 

But this is where we fail.  This is when we miss the point.  God never says no to one thing, without saying yes to another.  Granted, it may not be what we have planned or wanted even, yet the Father’s truest intention is for our good.  Why sit us at the closed door when he who can open the doors no man can shut has something more perfect in mind for us?

 

Let us look away from the closed door.  Unless the Lord opens it, it will never open.  Our stare, our camping out by its frame will not make it open any faster.  Let us look away, to him…and see if he has not done what he has promised:  to give us hope and a future, and a better one at that!  (Jeremiah 29:11)