So long ago that it happened at the close of a Baptist church evening service – on a Wednesday night – I paused in my chatter with a friend to step out of the foyer and into the night air, using my then-wiry frame to hold the door open for two elderly ladies coming out behind me. They emerged together, so I pressed back until the door was pushed all the way to the outside wall.
The sweet ladies complimented me on being a gracious young gentleman, and I was blushing humbly at the praise when I heard an odd … squeaking noise, behind me. Then – as I pressed the door back a little farther to let the last woman through – a kind of gurgling, gasping sound.
I turned to see another small, elderly woman, pressed flat against the building wall, squeezed into a human pancake by the gracious young gentleman and his door.
Horrified, I leapt back. The door swung slowly shut, and the flattened woman gingerly peeled herself off the wall, sputtering, wheezing, then staggering away – after fixing me with the most savage look I‘ve ever received in a lifetime crowded with good intentions gone awry.
A few years later, I read of a commercial flight from Beijing to Shanghai, the latter among the most crowded airspaces in the world. As the flight drew near its destination, the co-pilot slipped out of the cockpit to make a quick final lap through the plane, checking on crew and passengers.
He returned to the front of the aircraft and reached for the cockpit door. The doorknob turned; the door didn’t open. He pulled again, harder. Nothing. Soon, he was gripping the doorknob with both hands and yanking with all of his weight. The door wouldn’t budge.
Finally, the door popped open – from the inside – and the pilot leaned out to ask what was going on. “The door jammed,” explained the co-pilot. The pilot made a face.
“The door doesn’t jam,” he snorted. “They check those things before we take off.” The co-pilot insisted that the door did, in fact, jam, inspection or no. Vigorous debate ensued.
Finally, the pilot, determined to prove his point, said, “I’ll show you” – as he stepped out of the cockpit and shut the door.
A moment later, both pilots were yanking at the knob and throwing their shoulders at the door … while passengers, looking out their windows at a sky full of airplanes, tightened their seatbelts and brought their seats to the upright position. It took the crew 20 minutes to break back into the cockpit.
September 11, 2001: a terrified mass of people rushed for the lobby doors of the Twin Towers office buildings. Far above them, the raging fires were eroding the superstructure; in minutes, the great buildings would collapse. Already, bodies and debris were raining down, spurring the panicked race for safety. The lines were backing up – too few exits for too many people – and screams rose amid the shoving and jostling and squeezing through the doors.
One man, finally reaching the threshold, glanced back to see an older woman trying to push through the crowd. He paused, stepping aside to let her through. She lunged out, and he moved to follow behind her – only to be fatally crushed, in that moment, by something hurtling down from above.
We are, all of us, haunted by doors. Points of transition – literal or metaphoric – that came and went and left nothing the same. Portals of opportunity we should have pushed through, or left unopened, or opened for somebody else.
Relationships that might have been more, or that wound up being too much a of a bad thing. Jobs we could have taken; career moves we should have passed by. Adventures that might have transformed our whole lives; fleeting options we never recognized for what they were. Moments of destiny that should have swung open before us, but, for whatever reason, did not.
Doors that, closing, should have left some bad feelings, rough experiences, dark memories behind. But not all doors, unlocked, come open. And not all doors, closed, stay shut.
It will be an extraordinary mercy of God if a certain teacher in Uvalde, Texas, is ever able to leave behind her the image of a door that should have locked, automatically, when she pulled it shut last week.
The door did not lock, for reasons still unknown. A few moments later, a vicious gunman walked through, selected a classroom crowded with young children, and burst in to slaughter them.
Two teachers were also killed, dying trying to protect the young students in their care. Neither of the two was the one who apparently ran out to her car for something, a few minutes earlier, saw the young man with the gun coming toward her building, and raced to get back inside the door, find a phone, and call for help. She carefully pulled the door firmly shut behind her, assuming it would lock, as usual. It did not.
For days, she was blamed, anonymously, for leaving the killer an entry. A hurried moment of desperate response, trying to do the right thing. But the door did not cooperate.
As, so often, they do not.
Only one door, we are promised, is always within our power to open or to close, to lock and unlock, once and for all.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” Jesus says. “If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and dine with him, and he with Me.”
May our God shower His tender mercies on the shattered souls of Uvalde. On all of us who have failed at – or been failed by – a door.
And on every broken spirit who, hearing that knock, finds grace to let Him come in.
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