There's a small ridge at the bottom of my sliding back door, right where it opens onto the porch. You have to lift your foot slightly to clear it or you'll catch your toe and stumble. I've walked over it a thousand times without thinking about it. I only started noticing it recently, probably because I've been standing in a few doorways of my own lately, the kind you can't quite see the other side of yet.
That little ridge has a name. It's called a threshold.
As you read the Scriptures, you come to notice that thresholds take place all over the Bible. Scripture is not just a collection of moral lessons or ancient history. It's a long record of people crossing from one place into another. A new name. A new king. A new home. A new way of life. Someone is always standing at the edge of what's next, not sure yet what it will ask of them. Over and over, that in-between space turns out to be exactly where God shows up.
God is not absent in the ordinary stretches of our lives, the Tuesdays that look like every other Tuesday. But there's something about a threshold moment that seems to draw God close. Maybe because thresholds ask something of us. They ask for courage. Curiosity. A willingness to admit we don't know what's next. Most of us would rather stay in the room we know.
Life has a way of putting all of us in doorways we didn't plan for. I'm learning, slowly, that the uncertainty is not evidence God has stepped back. It might be the opposite.
A good seminary friend of mine walked through a threshold like this over a decade ago, after a sudden loss in his family knocked the wind out of him and left him asking hard questions about what came next. Out of that season, he put together something called “Spirituality of Transitions,” with some simple reflections meant to help you sit with the questions instead of rushing past them. Here's the guide. I hope it's useful wherever you are in your own doorway.
If you're standing in a threshold right now, or you can feel one coming, don't rush it and don't waste it. Some of God's best work happens right there, in the doorway.
peace,
Nick
That little ridge has a name. It's called a threshold.
As you read the Scriptures, you come to notice that thresholds take place all over the Bible. Scripture is not just a collection of moral lessons or ancient history. It's a long record of people crossing from one place into another. A new name. A new king. A new home. A new way of life. Someone is always standing at the edge of what's next, not sure yet what it will ask of them. Over and over, that in-between space turns out to be exactly where God shows up.
God is not absent in the ordinary stretches of our lives, the Tuesdays that look like every other Tuesday. But there's something about a threshold moment that seems to draw God close. Maybe because thresholds ask something of us. They ask for courage. Curiosity. A willingness to admit we don't know what's next. Most of us would rather stay in the room we know.
Life has a way of putting all of us in doorways we didn't plan for. I'm learning, slowly, that the uncertainty is not evidence God has stepped back. It might be the opposite.
A good seminary friend of mine walked through a threshold like this over a decade ago, after a sudden loss in his family knocked the wind out of him and left him asking hard questions about what came next. Out of that season, he put together something called “Spirituality of Transitions,” with some simple reflections meant to help you sit with the questions instead of rushing past them. Here's the guide. I hope it's useful wherever you are in your own doorway.
If you're standing in a threshold right now, or you can feel one coming, don't rush it and don't waste it. Some of God's best work happens right there, in the doorway.
peace,
Nick