Pretty morning. I sat perched in the swing eating my bagel and watching the squirrels and birds on the feeders. Fatty amazes me jumping from the oak tree to the feeder poles. Bet he’s jumping three feet or more. I saw an American goldfinch today. Don’t know why he’s hanging around. I read they are mid-summer nesters but I think it’s early for that, too. The buzzards were back climbing the stairway to the heavens today. They just wind around and around till they are nearly invisible. I could see their shadows on the sidewalk while I sat in the swing.

Went outside to watch the sunset and we were having such a windstorm I couldn’t sit out there. Blew all the pillows off the swings and chairs and turned over the ferns. I just put everything in Penelope’s pen and came back in the house. I’m praying for rain, right now it’s just wind. The bamboo forest is getting a good aerobic workout, bending and twisting in the wind, the young ones slapping the ground and each other. I love to watch them during a storm.

Back to reading quotes and I’m intrigued by the first one I read. “If you want God to close and open doors, you’ve got to get your hand off the door knob,” Dartannon Wilson, Sr. Doors serve as protection from the outside world and offer us privacy. God is the only one who can open the correct doors in our lives. Sometimes we get impatient and try to open the doors ourselves. We try to control things without God’s intervention. An open door can be the beginning or can be the ending. But we do have to let go of the door knob and let God open the door at the most opportune moment.

Throughout our life time, God opens many doors of opportunities in our careers, our families, our relationships, our faith. And he closes doors sometimes that we want to keep open. It’s hard to be patient and wait for another door to open and sometimes we try to open a new door and it shuts in our face. Matthew 7:7-8 reads, “Ask, and God will give to you. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will open for you. Yes, everyone who asks will receive. Everyone who searches will find. And everyone who knocks will have the door opened.”

Only God can open the doors that govern our life and give us an entry to heaven. We can’t buy our way to eternal life through our wealth or good deeds. That door to heaven is opened when we give our hearts to God and repent for our sins. I’ve always heard these sentences but never knew they were attributed to Alexander Graham Bell. “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

I can remember when Rosie died I heard “when one door closes, another opens” many times during her visitation and funeral. And I always wondered what kind of door would open after such a tragedy. But I learned through my grief that God would give me many opportunities to open a door to healing as I helped others through their grief of losing a child. My grief had opened a new door and I walked through it and found some peace.

God opens a spiritual door to give us access to his love and grace. “What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open,” Revelation 2:7. God can always handle the closed doors in our lives and help us open the new doors. If you put your faith in God, you learn when God opens a door it’s aways the right one. Don’t hold the door knob so tightly. Let God open the door.

“Often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” — Helen Keller