Here are some thoughts as I stand at the door of this new year, 2025.
The reason we rush through life, cramming our days far beyond full, is that we know we are made for eternity. We know we should be able to do everything and have it all, yet we wear the shackles of time. And so we keep pushing at the walls of our prison, trying to make twenty-four hours stretch to eternity, but they just won’t go. Those twenty-four hours are inviolable.
Meanwhile, what we fail to realize is that the door of our prison stands open, and all we need do is walk through it. This is The Door of Now, the one entrance to eternity. It is always today, never yesterday or tomorrow, and the time today is always now. How precious is this exact moment! We shall never meet it again. To enter life through this narrow gate is to be rich beyond measure. Where is God? In all His fullness, He is here, He is now.
“Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2).
A second prison whose bars may enclose us is the prison of unwanted circumstances. We find ourselves in the grip of this or that, and try as we might, we see no escape.
But this prison too has a door which stands wide open, yet its entrance is so low that, standing tall in our pride, we do not see it. But lower our gaze, and bend our knee, and there it is: The Door of Acceptance. As with The Door of Now, with acceptance our circumstances may or may not change, but what is certain is that, without it, we cannot be free. We are bound by whatever in our lives we shrink from or reject.
“To accept your lot and be happy is the gift of God” (Ecc 5:19).
A third prison we are in is the prison of our own thoughts. Yet here again, the door of this prison stands open, if only we would take it. This is The Door of Prayer.
Prayer is the only means that gives us true access to another person’s thoughts. Others may tell us their thoughts, in conversation or writing, but this is only second hand; we do not and cannot really know their thoughts directly. Though biographers would love to do so, no one can open another’s mind to walk around inside, as we do with our own mind. The only way is through prayer, and the only other mind to which we can gain direct access is that of God, since He has given us the gift of His Spirit.
“We have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16).
How precious, then, is this gift of prayer! There is really nothing else like it, no other comparable intimacy.
How sad, then, that so many of us either avoid prayer, or else think we are praying when really we are not. We say words, or perform actions, or meditate, but we do not actually pass through the open door of our prison into freedom.
And yet it is so simple! The key is to know—really know—that I am in the presence of another Person as real as I, or even more so: the living God, the risen and eternally alive Christ. To know this is faith, and to act on it is prayer.
Three prisons, three doors: Now, Acceptance, Prayer.
Do you want to be free? Don’t wait. The doors are open—run through them.
“I am the door” (John 10:7).
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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