The Wardrobe Door That Required Walking Through

In C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, young Lucy Pevensie discovers a passage to Narnia hidden in the back of an old wardrobe. But here is the detail we often overlook — the wardrobe did not pull her in. She had to keep walking. She felt the scratch of fur coats, then the prick of pine needles, then the crunch of snow beneath her feet. At any point she could have turned back to the familiar safety of the spare room. Instead, she took one more step, and then another, into a world she did not yet understand.

Obedience works the same way. God rarely flings open the heavens and catapults us into His will. More often, He sets a door before us and waits to see if we will walk through it. Abraham packed his tents for a land he had never seen. Moses turned aside to look at a bush that burned without burning up. Ruth chose the dusty road to Bethlehem over the comfortable return to Moab. Each of them took one step before they could see what lay beyond it.

The Almighty does not ask us to understand the entire journey before we begin. He asks us to take the next step. Lucy did not need a map of Narnia. She needed the willingness to keep walking when the coats gave way to branches and the carpet gave way to snow.

What wardrobe door is God setting before you today — and are you willing to walk through it?