A doorkeeper has different jobs depending on what side of the door he’s standing. While he welcomes small and great alike, he has a duty to also monitor potential danger and takes steps to protect.

There’s a little cabin up in northern Minnesota nestled among trees and sitting on the edge of a lake that is a second home to me. As years have passed and families of other cabin owners have expanded their cabins, our little cabin has, for the most part, remained the same. It’s a rectangle, a sketch my dad drew when we were all young. The windows are right where he drew squares on the rectangle and the door at the back of the cabin is on one side. Up until not too long ago there was a screen door, too; the kind made up of mostly screen, that closed with a satisfying slam if you didn’t shut it yourself, and with a hook for a lock.

It was to this cabin I was allowed to bring a friend one week when we were in high school. My friend, Pat, was the kind of friend you could depend on to be in the moment with you. She was full of energy and fun.

One night we were alone in the cabin. I don’t know where anyone in my family was. I do know they were far enough away to be inaccessible. It didn’t matter. We were having a grand time. But the evening was wearing on, and the cabin seemed kind of quiet. When night falls up there among the uninhabited pines it gets dark; the so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face kind of dark.

We opened the door and peered into blackness. We could see nothing. Then we noticed something unusual. It was some sort of splotch, some mark, some stain right on the screen. Being the reasonable and imaginative teenage girls we were (no doubt Pat having the better part of reason and I having the better part of imagination), we decided that my brother had been walking to the cabin and been mauled by a bear. The stain must be his blood spattered during the awful encounter! I kid you not. It made perfect, if somewhat alarming, sense to us. After some panicked conversation, I yelled his name through the screen. A short moment, then the sound of feet running down the long driveway, then the blessed sound of his out-of-breath voice. Seeing his un-mauled, annoyed self in front of us we rather sheepishly confessed our concern. He was not amused. No. No, it never occurred to us there was rust on the screen. Why would it when there were so many other possibilities?

Some threats are imagined. But – oh yes – some are very real.

If you have the type of personality that is pretty laid back and are someone who is bothered by very little, I have one question. What is it like, dude? Make that two questions. Has any of that changed during these action-packed last days? (Or the un-edited equivalent, “Are you nuts?!”) We have a plethora of information bouncing around the world of which the truth is uncertain. We have Christians imprisoned and beheaded and set on fire. Right here in the United States, a nation that prides itself on freedom, some who must sit through senate hearings in order to be confirmed for a job to which they were appointed by the president are asked about their Christian beliefs as though such beliefs will prevent them from carrying out their job in a manner fair to others. We have schools, colleges, and universities that have opened their hallowed halls to indoctrination mixed in with their teaching. We have cyber attacks. We have souls marching in the streets for justice while destroying property and attacking people. And we even have some of our churches sitting back and approving. Doorkeeper, do not let your church be guilty of that.

As a doorkeeper you welcome. But, when necessary, you also warn.

to be continued . . .

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