This is the second entry in the UCCDM Lenten Devotional 2015. This reflection for Ash Wednesday comes to us from Mr. Robert Kates an M.Div. student at Brite Divinity School.
But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
~Matthew 6:6 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
I have prayed to my Mother/Father, God, many times behind my closed door. First, over twenty-five years ago when I felt that door slam in my face with the reality of HIV/AIDS and now these past seven years having developed polymyositis, a disease that affects all the muscles of the body. For that door opens onto a staircase leading down to the first floor. There are 14 steps.
However doors do have door knobs, God has shown them to me. They can be opened and walked through, even though now I may require a walker. And that staircase beyond my door must be descended cautiously, and climbed passionately. Yet still God has shown me nothing is impossible, nothing is forever, everything has possibilities even when they seem ultimately futile. There is always hope or another way to achieve things.
The door that slammed in my face twenty-five years ago has miraculously turned into a chronic disease, no longer an ultimate death certificate, and not to become the last door in my life with which to deal.
The door opening onto my exterior staircase going down those fourteen, very scary steps, may eventually be replaced by a door leading onto a ground level sidewalk with no steps, maybe perhaps an easy sloping ramp.
God has shown me my abilities by rewarding me with the knowledge to take care of myself. How to turn the door knobs in life. God has given me back my life, my dignity, to take control of my life once again and live it to its fullest. Abling me to transcend many doors, and descend and ascend many staircases.
For there are doors for everyone to heal behind and then venture out from. Doors are of benefit, meant for privacy and intimacy, but never for exclusion.
Right before Christmas, this year, I had a relapse of my polymyositis. I was in the middle of fall, final exams at seminary. I fell and could not walk for three days. Today I can, but carefully. This is encouraging considering I graduate this spring from seminary and hope to be ordained in two years, before I turn 65.
Perhaps God still wants me to keep walking out that door to the staircase, to use those steps as daily exercise so as to forestall my disease, perhaps negate it. Perhaps God keeps challenging me, because once I am ordained, my concern will be with other people’s challenges. I hope always to have doors to pass through, and pray behind.
