My path crossed some years back with a friend who taught me something as important as it was obvious: “Knock on closed doors.” He had literally made his fortune that way. He had earned his way through school (including graduate school at Harvard—a most prestigious place to study) by selling vacuum cleaners door to door. He got so good at it that he took a pay cut when he graduated and went to work for a multi-national business.
He taught me much about sales. The beginning lesson was this: Knock on closed doors.
A door isn’t likely to open unless you let someone know you are standing outside. The polite way to let someone know you are outside is to knock on the door (or ring the bell). When you knock, you respect a person’s boundary and ASK to be let in. It is not polite to just open a closed door unless you are already familiar with the person. Even then, it can be discombobulating to find your adult son or your mother standing in your living room unexpectedly.
Knock on a closed door. Let the person on the inside open it to you.
But don’t be afraid to knock. A door that is closed right now can open in an instant–because you knocked.
I started thinking about this in prayer about a month ago. I was praying from Luke 11: 9 “Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, KNOCK and it will be opened to you.” In this passage Jesus was teaching his disciples how to approach the Father in prayer. He was saying in effect, “If you want the Father’s attention, pray with hope, submission, and respect.”
In today’s first reading from Revelation, John is in the middle of a vision—a revelation from God. In this vision God gives John messages for seven churches. We read the messages for two of those churches today. There are some harsh words, “I know your works, that you have a reputation for being alive, but you are dead” the Lord says to the church in Sardis.” To the church in Laodicea he says, “I know you are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were either cold or hot. Because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Ouch, Lord!
But then we have this beautiful passage about God knocking on our door: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.”
These two passages—the one from Luke telling me to knock on God’s door and this one in Revelation telling me that God knocks on our doors—have become what charismatics would call a “WORD” to me. They stick in my mind like glue. I think of them again and again. They are acting as God knocking on my door. They are helping me see a Truth which makes a big difference in my life just now: knock on closed doors.
It is truly a revelation to me!
I began a process of re-conversion to enthusiastic, all-in-for-Jesus commitment to my Catholic Christian faith seven years ago. In those seven years I have searched for what God wants me to do now that I have returned to him with my whole heart.
It has been very hard to find out.
But I have been looking for open doors. For a very long time NOTHING seemed to be open to me. My prayer, worship, general attitude, and lived life have been generally in what St. Ignatius called “a spirit of consolation,” so I was more frustrated than worried. My spiritual director urged patience and trust and patience and trust and patience and trust. I have tried to be patient and trusting.
But “what do you want me to do, Lord?” I have cried in the night again and again. I was knocking on God’s closed door—that’s for sure.
But I did not knock on closed doors in my life. If a door seemed closed, I went on down the hall to look for an open one. I have been so afraid of rejection–that at my age (60s) God was putting me out to pasture, or that others would reject me (old wounds from childhood) that I was afraid to knock on closed doors.
I kept complaining to God that he was not guiding me as he had done clearly at earlier times in my life. I remembered open doors from the past that were clearly God’s guidance.
But, until the past couples of weeks I did not realize that those doors HAD OPENED TO ME WHEN I KNOCKED ON THEM. I knocked on closed doors when God led me to work for integration of public schools in the 1960s. I knocked on closed doors in the 1970s when we found out that my body would not let me give birth to children. I knocked on closed doors in the 1980s when there was a need for pregnancy crisis centers and maternity homes to counter the prevalence of abortion. I knocked on closed doors in the 1990s and into this century as I worked with troubled families.
True, that last time, I opened the humanist door. I wonder, today as I write this, if that has been what has caused me to stop knocking. I realized when that door opened there was much that was attractive to me. I went through it and became tepid. My works looked alive but were really dead. I wonder if I have been afraid that I might again go through a wrong door and God would “spit me out of his mouth.”
He has not. Instead he has knocked and knocked and knocked on my door. And I have opened it again and again—ever so gradually. The door I have opened is my prayer relationship with him. Through habits of prayer I KNOCKED often on that one.
It has been ministry doors that are just now becoming clear. I hope they will be clearer yet if I knock on some doors that I see as closed. I want to write. I want to teach, but I’ve been waiting for people to ask me. I have not yet asked to write or teach for God.
Meanwhile, Jesus has even come looking for me when I was up a tree—as he did Zaccheus in today’s Gospel. “Come down, Mary, and dine with me!” he has said.
I have come down to dine with Jesus in prayer and my relationships with older members of our parish.
What doors that look closed might I knock on now to build on the doors of prayer and elder ministry? What doors might I knock on to write and teach? What doors might I knock on to design?
Good and exciting questions.
Now some questions for you.
Is Jesus knocking at your door today? Is he knocking on your door of tepidity? Or have you wandered far away from him like Zaccheus (and I) did?
And what doors might you to knock on today? The door to try a new ministry? The door to REALLY give your family up to God? The door to speak up for your faith? The door of deep prayer? The door of prophecy about what you see around you? The door of mercy and forgiveness for hurts you experienced long ago—or yesterday?
Learn with me: Knock on closed doors.
Prayer:
Give me the grace, Lord, to open the door of my heart to you today when you knock. And give me the wisdom to know what doors you want me to knock on. Give me detachment enough to welcome doors that open and doors that close. Give me courage enough to keep knocking, until you and I can walk through one together—and dine.
Link to today’s readings: Revelation 3:1-6, 14-22, from Psalm 15, Luke 19:1-10.
Note: Laura Kazlas will write next Tuesday while I am on vacation. Then, as a new church year begins, Bob Garvey and I will switch days. He will write on Tuesday, and I will write on Thursday. That gives us a chance to pray deeply from different scriptures. Blessings!
