Knocking on God’s Door

A friend narrated how he once rushed a seriously sick man to a nearby general hospital, but upon reaching the hospital he found that the doors were securely closed and sealed. The reason was that the hospital staff was on strike. The sick man would have died if not that a decision was made to rush him to a neighboring private clinic.

We often encounter similar situations of closed doors that tend to frustrate the attainment of our set goals. Our path through life encounters many closed doors. Life would be almost impossible if these doors all remained closed. We often take it for granted that the doors will always open for our passage. It is always terrible when we knock and the door refuses to open. Sometimes we knock and knock but someone refuses to open the door. Sometimes, we do not even dare to knock for fear of the one who is on the other side of the door. In such situations, one needs courage to keep knocking. Today, Jesus encourages us to knock as the door will always be opened.

Knocking is a request to enter into another’s sphere of existence. It is an appeal to become a participant in another’s existential space. When Jesus asks us to knock, he is telling us that better life lies on the other side of the closed door. Jesus often uses the metaphor of the closed door to explain the difficulty involved in entering the kingdom of God and the persistence required in such efforts at entry. In the reading of today from Matthew 7:7-12, he employs the three verbs, asking, seeking and knocking, to express the different but related efforts to acquire new life from God: “Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you, For the one who asks, receives. The one who seeks, finds. The one who knocks, enters” (7:7-8). The three acts of asking, seeking, and knocking are different but related ways of making efforts to get what lies on the other side. The act of knocking is put last because it requires the greatest physical force. Knocking gives the idea that we are not just asking but we want to enter. With reference to God, we are knocking to enter into the exalted divine realm. We are asking God to open His existential space to us so that we can possess the kingdom and also that He can possess us and take control of our problems.

This is what we do in prayer and that is why prayer is a powerful activity. Jesus is asking us to keep praying as God will surely answer and open the treasures of the kingdom to us. Prayer has changed many impossible situations and made many people greater than they could ever have imagined. The first reading of today from Esther 12:14-16,23-25 is a practical demonstration of this transformative power of prayer as the young lady Esther courageously runs to God as her only source of succor in a situation of great distress.  

We are often discouraged by the difficulties that confront us every now and then. In such terrible moments, we often find all avenues of progress and success closed by forces greater than us. But we are encouraged never to lose hope. We must keep knocking on the spiritual door. With prayer, all closed avenues and all closed doors and windows of progress and life will be opened.

[Readings: Est C:12, 14-16, 23-25; Mt 7:7-12]