I Stand By The Door

My uncle, brother, and friend sent me this poem. It's most excellent.

I stand by the door, I neither go too far in nor stay too far out.

The door is the most important door in the world.

It is the door through which men walk when they find God.

There is no use my going way inside and staying there when so many are still outside and they as much as I crave to know where the door is.

And all that so many find is only the wall where the door ought to be.

They creep along the wall like blind men with outstretched groping hands feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door, yet they never find it.

So I stand by the door.

The most tremendous thing in the world is for men to find that door, the door to God.

The most important thing that any man or woman can do is to take hold of one of those blind groping hands and put it on the latch, the latch that only clicks and opens to the man’s own touch.

Men die outside the door as starving beggars die on cold nights in cruel cities in the dead of winter, die for want of what is within their grasp.

They live on the other side of it, live because they’ve not found it.

Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it and open it and walk in and find Him.

So I stand by the door.

I admire the people that go way in but I wish they would not forget how it was before they got in.

Then they would be able to help the people who have not yet even found the door.

Or the people who want to run away again from God.

You can go in too deeply and stay in too long and forget the people outside the door.

As for me I shall take my old accustomed place, near enough to God to hear Him and know He is there but not so far from men as to hear them and remember that they are there too.

Where?

Outside the door.

Thousands of them, millions of them.

But more important for me, one of them, two of them, ten of them, whose hands I am intended to put on the latch.

So I shall stand by the door and wait for those who seek it.

I had rather be a door keeper.

So I stand by the door.

- Sam Schumaker

"I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture" - John 10:9

Grace and Peace