Saint Ambrose, Bishop - an excerpt from his writings

If you shut the door of your mind, you shut out Christ. Though he can enter, he does not want to force his way in rudely, or compel us to admit him against our will.

Closing my eyes and letting my mind build a visual image of this observation, the image I see is of a mud house with simple window openings unprotected by glass with plank shutters and an unframed door opening closed off by an unlatched wooden plank door.  I can see sort of a Hobbit kind of thing except without the charm and warmth of the real hobbit town we experienced in the Lord of the Rings. By securing the doors and window of our simple little hut, we not only shut out the sunlight, we are blocking out the eternal light of Christ. Try as we might, our attempts to hide ourselves away. We are imperfect carpenters and shafts of light stream through cracks in the wood and around the clumsily constructed edges. That we cannot block the light makes us uncomfortable in our seclusion because it reminds us what waits if we only open the door. To reach for the door to open it requires us to overcome the shame we feel for having tried secret ourselves from his presence. Once the door is open and we are again with him it takes but a moment for his healing grace to restore us.

 When we are healed we find ourselves living in a spiritual summer where good things grow and flourish. Inevitably we have to enter a spiritual winter when we try to answer doubts whispered into our hearts by voices that are not from God. We cannot avoid this time because we are human. The gift that growing faith brings us is that we recognize earlier that winter has settled in on us and we can take the first steps ourselves to journey back into the light of spring. The journey begins by simply opening the door to let the light of grace flood in on us and then we can again step out into the brightness.