We are staying the weekend with my daughter and her family at a house on Lake James, NC. It is a wonderful place with scenic vistas of the Appalachia’s and the clear lake below. This morning I got up to go into town to purchase donuts for the crew. The problem was the community where our house is guarded by a gate and one must have a code to get in and out. I have the code, but when I punched it in, the gate didn’t open. Believing that the evening’s rain might have shorted the keypad out, I climbed the fence and tried the other keypad but to no avail. I returned without donuts and was met by a family that believed I simply couldn’t enter the code correctly. (Often, a valid assumption.) So a bigger contingency piled back into the car only to discover that the gate simply would not budge.
There was a lesson beyond a donut less morning here. When we build walls and gates they may appear to provide some form of security or protection, but they also lock us out from the outside. I’m not necessarily talking about walls and gates between communities, neighbors, or nations. We build walls and gates around our heart and thoughts that may seem to offer us security, but they may keep out the very help we need and certainly prevent us from getting out and receiving the gifts that God provides. (Yes, a donut is definitely a heavenly gift.)
Have you built walls and gates that fail to serve their original purpose or need to be opened or torn down?
Perhaps, more importantly for us all to realize like I did this donut run. Gates may keep people out, but they also us lock us in.
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