In last Sunday’s reflection I talked about an occasion when I had prayed to God for a sign and He sent me one. I talked about God opening a door for me even though it took me forty years to understand the sign for what it was.Recently I prayed again, well I pray every night but sometimes instead of praying for others I asked for some guidance from God for me. When I ask for help, I usually receive some kind of sign,, at least when I am smart enough to recognize them. After I fell asleep I had a dream, no, I didn’t have a vision, and honestly I don’t even know if it had anything to do with my prayers. I don’t understand much about dreams, why we dream what we dream, why sometimes we have the same dream more than once. I do know I have had this dream before except there were some minor differences.

This dream isn’t important to this reflection other than the fact it had me thinking about doors. In the dream I was walking down a street and there were all these doors going into empty building. The last two times I had this dream I went into the buildings and bad things happened. This time I didn’t open the door, I knew if I did bad things would happen. Instead I kept walking by them. As I thought about this I thought about Satan and how he gives us lots of doors to open.

It is like that old game show, “Let’s Make A Deal”, where you had three doors and you had to pick one. When you picked one, Monty Hall would try to convince you to trade the one you picked for another one, trying to sweeten the deal. Satan pretty much does the same thing with sins. The difference is he gives you more than one chance and he lets you peek in each door. On the television show, the audience encourages the contestant and gives advice. Satan does the same thing, the only one who is quiet is God.

You see God leaves it up to you to decide on your own. This is why he gives you “Free Will”. That started at the very beginning with Adam and Eve. Satan however doesn’t play fair, he will tempt you with all kinds of good things, and once you sin once, it is really easy to sin the next time and the next. Believe me I know. The funny thing about sin is they all make you feel good. When Satan tempts you with those doors you already know which ever one you pick is going to make you feel good. I think of my own sinning and why I turned away from the church, it was because my sinning made me feel good and that mean old Catholic Church didn’t want me to feel good. I didn’t turn away from God, just his Church. I knew better than the Pope, not better than God, but certainly the Pope. I’ll talk about how I justified my leaving the church some other time.

We have all these doors and at first there might be two of them, one good, one bad. One leading to sin, one leading to good deeds. We don’t have any help to decide, trust worthy help that is. Satan is more than happy to help us, God on the other hand, He helps us in a quiet way, hoping we make the right choice; He leaves it up to us. If we have a strong will and a good religious upbringing, we stand a pretty good chance of picking the right door. If we do, Satan will tempt us again, but this time he will add an extra door. Instead of a 50/50 chance of picking the right door, we now only have a one in three chance of picking the door which leads to good. Each time Satan tempts us he adds another door, and if we pick one of the doors which makes us sin, he adds more each time. Like I said above, when we sin once, we find out we like it and we might not try so hard to find the right door the next time.

Jesus teaches us to

“Strive to enter by the narrow door: for many, I tell you will seek to enter and will not be able.” – Luke 13:24

The narrow door is clearly marked if, and only if, we follow the teachings of God and Jesus. Each time we pick the wrong door, the narrow door gets a little narrower and the other doors get wider. Pretty soon we can hardly see the narrow door and won’t be able to enter it.

God will help us, if we listen. God will show us the right door, but it is up to us to ask for his guidance. and just like Satan will make it easier for us to sin when we keeping picking the wrong door, so too will God when we keep picking the right door. He will show us the way to the narrow door, but it is up to us to listen, to see what he is showing us, and mostly to believe that He indeed knows more than we do.

I think I just figured out that dream.