When it comes to making big decisions, I’ve often heard the saying, “When God closes a door, He opens a window.” The idea is that if a door is open, we should walk through it, and if it appears to be closed, that’s our sign to go a different way.
I just read I Corinthians 16:8-9 a little while ago.
But I will stay on at Ephesus until Pentecost, because a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me.
Wait a minute. The door is open and yet there are many who oppose Paul? That doesn’t fit with my picture of open doors. Open doors are simple. They’re easy to go through. But this door open to Paul sounds difficult. It sounds uncomfortable. Maybe even scary. It doesn’t make sense according to my assumption that open doors are easy.
A week ago today a big storm came through our area. A large branch fell in our backyard, knocking down the power and phone/internet lines that go to our house.
Since the lines landed on the deck, we couldn’t use our back door. I suppose we COULD have used the door, but we wanted to be safe and avoid the possible hazards of the electric line lying across the deck. Once or twice Kevin used the door, but we generally went through the front door instead. I suppose it was smart of us to use the front door in this situation!
I just finished a book yesterday that I started last winter then put down for a few months. Once a Runner, by John L. Parker, Jr. is the story of a runner who goes through a “Trial of Miles.”
He wanted to impart (to the younger runners) some of the truths Bruce Denton had taught him, that you don’t become a champion by winning a morning workout. The only true way is to marshal the ferocity of your ambition over the course of many days, weeks, months, and (if you could finally come to accept it) years. The Trial of Miles; Miles of Trials. How could he make them understand? (p. 14)
On the altar of Consistency he offered up no less than two portions of his life per day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. His neatly filled calendar diary told no lies and the symbolism of the unmissed workout became ritualistic to him, taking on an importance in his life he did not like to admit, even to himself. (p. 35)
During the most difficult training session of his life to that point, Quenton Cassidy’s feelings of despair are mirrored as he remembers the one marathon he had run.
On the twenty-third mile he had looked around and discovered that everything seemed unfamiliar. Convinced he was lost, he ran on like a forlorn child, blubbering and wailing. When he finished the race in 2:33 he saw he had been on the right course after all. But he still couldn’t keep from weeping; he just didn’t know why any longer. (p. 225)
His extreme training session continued in the story with Cassidy’s “tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth” and no moisture left to “spit out the thick white fluffs of congealed saliva.” (p. 225)
Parched to the marrow, wobbly, near mad, he took his tiny jogging steps and waxed (so he thought) poetic:
Somewhere they fox-trot madly
While in lunar shadows sadly
I keep pace with crickets gladly
And Moon rises with my bile (p. 225)
In a conversation with someone about why he trained as he did, Cassidy made the following statements.
‘Oh hey’–he sat up straight–’it’s not (interesting). Take my word for it.’ Deftly he watched her reaction and then in almost perfect sync repeated her next question right along with her: ‘Then why do you do it?’….
‘Actually when you’re training you can think about anything you want, almost. But in a race, everyone thinks about the same thing.’ (he said) ‘Which is?’ (she said)
‘The race, oddly enough.’ (Cassidy answered) (p. 231)
During that conversation Cassidy never comes right out with it, but winning the race seems to be his motivation.
Before the final race of the book, Cassidy walks through the course the evening before, visualizing the next morning’s race as he walks.
“He walked into the turn of the third lap. Here the real melancholy began, when the runner might ask himself just what in the hell he was doing to himself. It was a time for the most intense concentration, the iciest resolve. It was here the leader might balk at the pain and allow the pace to lag, here that positions shifted; those whose conditioning was not competitive would settle to the back of the pack to hang on, the kickers would move up like vultures to their vantage points at the shoulders of the front runners. It was a long, cruel lap with no distinguishing feature save the fact that it had to be run. Every miler knows, in the way a sailor knows the middle of the ocean, that it is not the first lap but the third that is farthest from the finish line. Races are won or lost here, records broken or forfeited to history, careers made or ended. The third lap was a microcosm, not of life, but of the Bad Times, the times to be gotten through, the no-toys-at-Christmas, sittin’-at-the-bus-station-at-midnight blues times to look back on and try to laugh about or just forget. The third lap was to be endured and endured and endured….
Cassidy walked through the turn, pumping his arms a little, thinking of the nervous crowd noises as the pace began to pick up. Perhaps there would be only a small group left in it now; three, four maybe. But they would all have ambitions; no one ever ran down the back straight without thinking he had a shot at it. On Cassidy walked, along the lonely straight imagining the bristling speed as the pace heated up; there would be some last-second evaluations, some positioning and repositioning, and then finally the kicks, one by one or all at once, blasting away for the tightly drawn yarn across the finish line. Into the turn with only a 330 to go, everyone would be into it by then, everyone still in contention….Cassidy walked into the final 110 straight and thought, Here, as they say, it will be all over but the shouting; you will fight the inclination to lean backward, fight to keep the integrity of the stride, not let overeager limbs flail around trying to get more speed, just run your best stride like you have trained ten thousand miles to do and don’t for God’s sake let up here until the post is behind you. The die would be cast here, and no praying or cheering or cajoling or whimpering would change it. He had lost in this final straight before, but not as much as he had won here; neither held much in the way of fear or surprise once you were there. Such matters, as Denton had often said, were settled much earlier: weeks months, years before, they were settled on the training fields, on the ten-mile courses, on the morning workout missed here of made up there. Other than maintaining and leaning at the tape, Denton had told him, there is not much you can do about it. Heart has nothing to do with it. In the final straight, everyone had heart.
Cassidy walked on past the finish line, across which someone would hold the taut yarn and blink as the runners flashed by. It was still more than twenty-four hours away, but standing there in the calm anonymous night five yards past the familiar white post, Quenton Cassidy knew at that instant the depth of his frenzied yearning to feel the soft white strand weaken and separate against his heaving chest. (pp. 246-248)
The process of training and racing throughout his career doesn’t sound easy to me. It doesn’t seem to be a simple “open door.”
Life isn’t always easy.
…a great door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many who oppose me. (I Corinthians 16:9)
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (I Corinthians 9:24-27)
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)
