Life is Like A Hallway
Life is like walking down a long hallway inside a large house.
On each side of the hallway are many doors.
Some of the doors are laden with brilliance and colors.
Other doors are more humble, plain, undecorated.
You find yourself walking down the hall, looking for something.
You do not know what you are searching. But you do know that you must search.
You meet and pass by others who are also walking down the hall.
Many are excited and enter various doors, shouting, "Hurrah! I have found my place!"
Some whom you consider friends exclaim to you, "Enter this door - this must be for you too!"
However, you just know those doors are not for you. Something inside you tells you to keep searching.
You happen to glance inside some open doors to see what all the excitement is about.
You see pleasure, comfort, riches, and entertainment.
Yet you also see sadness, pain, deceitfulness, and separation.
You look more intensely inside the doorways and discover that beyond the gaze of your friends, inside the door, is darkness and entrapment.
You yell to your friends not to enter, but they do not listen.
Your friends appear to be blinded by the lure of the doors to the dangers therein.
Your friends do not heed your words.
In fact, you realize that they cannot heed your words.
Dazed by the brilliance and cunning decoration of the doors, they jump headlong into the doorway, ignoring your warning cries.
You seek, you warn, you search.
The hallway becomes more narrow now. You press on, unable to turn around because of the ever-narrowing of the hall.
You begin to feel nervous, fainthearted, and hopeless.
You become concerned for your family, whom you have brought along down the hall.
You have become exasperated, exhausted with the warnings you have shouted to your family.
Your feelings of joy for keeping your family from entering various doorways ebb away as you become weighed down with the burden of finding a door, the right door.
Your family begins to cry out for help, begging you to stop the pain of the ever-narrowing hallway.
You encourage your family to keep pressing on, to never give up.
You begin to feel overwhelmed and begin to question if you fatally erred by not entering an open door before the hallway closed.
You cry to God for help.
You encourage your family to cry out to God for help.
And just as you think you are about to be crushed by the hallway,
you find yourself walking on a long, thin plank.
The walls and ceiling and floor all vanish instantly.
You steady yourself on the long thin plank.
You caution your family to keep close and to stay focused.
You realize that one false step could send you plummeting off the plank into utter darkness.
As you walk along the plank, you see a dim light in the horizon.
Your spirit quickens, swelling with an unexpected joy and hope.
You encourage your family to press on, knowing that the end of the journey is near.
The light brightens and becomes more brilliant with each passing step.
You shade your eyes at the ever increasing, blinding light.
And just as you can bear the light no longer, you reach a crossroads with another plank.
You cry our for joy, and push your family ahead of you.
Your search has ended.
Darkness is no more.
Pain is no more.
You have found the crossroads of the two planks - the Cross.
You discover Jesus Christ waiting for you.
As your family rejoices with you, You realize that Christ had prepared the hallway for you.
He had made the way very straight and very narrow.
He wanted to find you and bring you to Himself.
He provided a way for all to come to Him.
He called you and spoke to you in your heart.
And as your eyes fill with tears, rejoicing in the presence of the never-ending Light,
He welcomes you into His arms and carries you the rest of the way Home.
