THE DOOR OF DEATH

After the death of his wife, Joy Davidman, C.S. Lewis wrote “A Grief Observed.” It was first published under the name of N.W. Clerk in 1961, and is an emotional, highly personal account, of Lewis’s struggle with her death. 

We may think of Jesus standing at the door and knocking, ready to come into our house and dine with us. (Revelation 3.20) Lewis, however, in prayers for his dying wife, found the door slammed in this face and bolted (double-bolted) from the inside. It was a door of death for both him and his wife.

The book was republished in 1989, under Lewis’s name, with a foreword by Madeleine L’Engle, who recounts her own struggles with the death of her spouse.

The metaphorical notion of a door goes far beyond mere death. We can have a door to our imagination, our dreams, our future, and so on. It provides an opening into something which we cannot see. In death, faith can help us pass through that door because faith is being sure of what we cannot see.

The uncertainty of death responds to faith and with it we are ready to walk through the door. It is a narrow door, not a gateway, not a wide-open door. We should approach it with caution and not with foolish images of Jesus having a “mansion” ready for us to live in. The other side has mystery on the one hand and assurance on the other.

The mystery of death is not in dying, but what lies after the “beyond” of our death, and we cannot know exactly what that is. God has given us glimpses from his word, but we can only see dimly, as through a frosted window.

However, in death Christians also have many assurances: God does have a “place” prepared for us, which assumes that we will have rest and work. From that place we will go on to serve God in some way, not simply by playing a harp and praising God; not listening to sermons, or meeting Paul and Peter, Abraham and Elijah, or aunt Bertha, but in actually doing some “work” for him. 

The “armies of God” in heaven are not disembodied souls floating around, but rather working groups consisting of distinct individuals, organized into units according to God’s plan and purpose.

Once we have passed through the door of death, we are alive in a new way.

Among the Kewa people of Papua New Guinea, where we lived and worked for many years, the words for “door” and “path” are the same. The men’s houses did not have doors but were open and had low gabled entryways. There was a low wall at the front of the house and a large log outside of the wall. Women could come and sit on the log, visit, pass food to men or boys inside the house, but they were not allowed to enter.

And, of course, the path is an entry into some place: a village, a garden, yes, even a house. There is no need for the Kewa to distinguish between a door and a path because both took you somewhere.

The door to the Kingdom has no such restrictions. It is open to all who believe that Jesus is indeed “the door.”

David tells us that he [God] “spoke to the sky above and commanded its doors to open; he gave them grain from heaven, by sending down manna for them to eat.” (Psalm 78.23-34)

God controls the “opening” above us, which is the “doors” of heaven. Upon death, those doors open for believers. As we read in Matthew 7.7, “Ask, and you will receive; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.”

Are we taking a “final journey” or is it just beginning?

Karl Franklin