Saturday 22 September 2012

I stand at the door and knock

In the book of Revelation we read, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
The verb to knock is an apt one, communicating a persistence and eagerness. It is especially appropriate in our media driven climate where nearly everyday people are vying for our attention.’
In this day of mobile phones, email, texting, tweeting, and skyping, we frequently have too many people ‘knocking’ at least electronically if not really, and with the knocking comes the choices, overwhelming choices, over who will get my attention in this moment? To survive, we quickly learn to pay attention only to what is important and to ignore what is not immediately necessary. After all, isn’t that what the answer-phone, the text and email inboxes are for, to keep messages that we do not have time to get to?

If the tsars of advertising had their way, we would live at the beck and call of every form of modern communication technology, as if we were all nurses or doctors who are constantly on-call. If you are like many others, you will find it all too fatiguing, and at some point you will turn off the phone, the computer, and answer phone, close the curtains, bolt the door, and dream of those days before anyone could find you in any minute of any day.

Yes, in this day and age, “I stand at the door and knock’ may sound like one more distraction, one more unnecessary commotion. But this knock, the knock of Jesus is different. He wants to come in; he wants to be your place of rest. In his patience, he waits for you, he is in your inbox waiting to be dealt with.

Over the years, people have told me that the thought of Jesus is unbelievable and our Christian faith is little more than a mind-game. It has been said that yes perhaps Jesus did live, but not anymore, he is gone and buried, and there is no one there knocking anymore. Perhaps, with the onslaught multimedia devices, this thought is comforting, one less distraction in my life, and one less thing to have to attend to.

But, what if, just what if, he really was there, knocking at the door of your heart, but with so many distractions you couldn’t quite hear or didn’t find the right moment to deal with it? So, perhaps He is still there asking you if he may enter into a relationship with you; one that would feed you and the world. Would you, could you, be ready to welcome such an encounter? Jesus tells us he is there; our shared faith testifies to Jesus’ continual and constant knocking and waiting. All you need to do is open that door, and together, nourished in His grace filled presence, the rest of the knocking will be dealt with in its turn…but, it will only happen if you stop and make the time, take the time, to open that door.

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