The Respectful Presence of God

Behold, I stand at the door and knock;

If anyone opens to me, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me.

(Rev. 3:20)

During last week's road trip to Ashville, I saw a window sign that said, Bidden or unbidden, God is present.  I liked the sign and thought about it for the next day or so.  But then I started thinking about Revelations 3:20, quoted above, and began thinking about the exquisite reticence of God, His "gentlemanliness," so to speak.

Though He is here, He "stands at the door," awaiting admittance.  He is waiting for us to open the door to His Presence, so that He can come into our lives.

Last June, one of my neighbors and I were discussing what kind of carpet she should put in her rental house.  I told her I liked the updated shag that I had chosen for the upstairs---no longer the horrible shag of the 70's, but a neat, trimmed look.  I opened the front door so she could see what I meant, and as I did so, the late afternoon sun highlighted a few strands of red and green tinsel that had been left on the stairs since Christmas.  Now, I'll be the first to admit that the stairs seldom get vacuumed, but this seemed a bit extreme.  I had not noticed the tiny bits of tinsel until the sun came through the door and immediately picked them out.  At that point, I saw the difficulty with shag carpet; no matter how neat it may look, it can still hide things that should be cleaned up.

Maybe the reason so few of us are reluctant to open the door to God's Presence is our just-below-the-surface realization that once we allow the light to shine in our lives, all the dirt hidden beneath our "neat" exterior will be exposed.  And maybe the reason God awaits our invitation to enter is that, like any good guest, He does not want to embarrass us by noticing what we do not want to be seen.

In Psalm 139, the psalmist says,

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

If we hear a knock at the door and open it to find Jesus waiting to be invited in, we might experience a moment or two of embarrassment, but until we allow the Son to shine in our lives, we will never see the leftover tinsel hiding in the shag carpet.