The Door at the End of the Hallway

Clara Gutierrez was eleven years old when her father took a job that kept him behind a closed office door most evenings. She would stand in the hallway of their small house in Tucson, bare feet on cool tile, working up the nerve to knock. She needed help with long division. She needed someone to listen to a story about what happened at recess. She needed her dad.

Every single time she knocked, the same thing happened. The chair would scrape back. Footsteps would cross the room. The door would open, and her father would crouch down to her eye level and say, "What do you need, mija?"

Not once did he say, "Go away." Not once did he pretend he could not hear her. Forty years later, Clara still remembers the sound of that chair scraping back — the sound of someone already moving toward her before the door even opened.

Jesus tells us to ask, seek, and knock — three words that escalate in urgency and boldness. But notice what He does not say. He does not say, "Ask and maybe you will receive." He does not say, "Knock and hope for the best." He says everyone who asks receives. Everyone who knocks finds the door swinging open.