Many years ago I would visit a close friend of mine, Willy, out in the beautiful, rolling hills of Kentucky. I can still remember the sound of the gravel popping and turning among the tires and the uncut grass that reached for my vehicle as I drove up the lane. As I neared his front porch, there he would stand, waiting on me with one arm raised to welcome me and the other leaning onto his cane. “What took you so long?” he would always ask. “Well, I had to stop and ask some deer for directions again.” This was an ongoing joke and it made him laugh…so we stuck with it.
After our routine handshake, we would sit on his front porch talking about nature, his kids that he missed and he would express how the stroke has made him angry and less motivated to live for today. I would mostly sit and listen, because I knew he needed to get out his emotions and just be heard as a man and a human being. Willy came from a long history of drug abuse and alcoholism, which left behind a history of arrest, wrong turns and pain that he carried deeply upon his face. I had been visiting Willy for about a year on and off as the months passed by and he became weaker from his stroke and other medical conditions involved. He never wanted to talk about faith and God, just that “all that isn’t for me…I am good where I’m at”, he would say. “We can lean into it some other time”, I’d reply.
On a rainy afternoon in July, I pulled into Willy’s drive as I did many times before to spend some time together. This time I noticed him walking toward me in the tall grass, with his cane and unsteady balance welcoming me. “Well, I did it!” he said with conviction. “Did what?” I said. “You know…went down to the ole church and got right.” Shaking his hand, I smiled and just shook my head with awesome fulfillment that captured me knowing what it all meant. We both chuckled and surrendered the moment as we made our way back to his front porch.
Revelation 3:8 I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.
In the last months of Willy’s life, he was called to the cross by the Holy Spirit and prayers to walk through the front doors of that church and forever be with our Heavenly Father. No cane, no loneliness and no more doubts. Today… go and be a “door” for a soul that will open up an eternal life wit
