The Open Door

After a week of ordinary and inevitable failures, sins, and missed opportunities, I’m content to remember in whose hands salvation lies and who invites us in to his Sabbath rest.  Psalm 84 talks about being a doorkeeper in God’s house.  I suspect I’ve occasionally been more like the malodorous bum lying on the steps, preventing others from entering.  But this poem reminds me that I am not strong enough to block God’s grace – great reassurance to a sinner like me.

The Doorkeeper

By John William Taylor

“I had rather be a doorkeeper in the House of my God than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness.”

 

To keep God’s door –

I am not fit.

I would not ask for more

Than this –

To stand or sit

Upon the threshold of God’s House

Out of the reach of sin,

To open wide His door

To those who come,

To welcome Home

His children and His poor:

To wait and watch

The gladness on the face of those

That are within:

Sometimes to catch

A glimpse or trace of those

I love the best, and know

That all I failed to be,

And all I failed to do,

Has not sufficed

To bar them from the Tree

Of Life, the Paradise of God,

The Face of Christ.