Thanksgiving 2014….

Last night, over leftover pie and laughter, most of our extended family reconnected in front of a roaring fire at my brother-in-law’s home in rural Virginia. One of my favorite moments of the evening was a short story my nephew Jon shared about college life. He told us how all the individual dorm rooms on his floor had recently been outfitted with new fire doors. Although infinitely safer, the fact that each door closed automatically had a profound effect on the sense of community in the dorm. People could no longer see who was in and who wasn’t, so students generally walked straight to their rooms, rather than dropping by and visiting with one another. With every door shut, banter no longer ricocheted up and down the corridor, and things previously shared with the entire floor now became the property of individual rooms. Soon after the installation, my nephew went home for a weekend and spent some time in the workshop where he cut a 2 x 6 plank into about 20, pie-sliced wedges. When he returned to campus, he handed each young man on his floor a new, homemade door-stop. And just that simply, community was restored.

My nephew has always been a quiet guy, but hearing this story, it was as if the very heart of him was illuminated. I love that Jon didn’t launch a campaign to have the doors changed, complain to his friends, or ruminate about the fact that community had broken down. I also love the fact that he was observant enough to see that the closed doors changed the dynamic of his floor, and that he chose to address that issue in his own special way.

Jon’s simple response lacked several of the steps that usually punctuate the way I address so many of the challenges in my own life… steps that keep me mired in a cycle of observing the problem and reacting to it, rather than moving toward solution. In fact, focusing on what is wrong can become a permanent stop in and of itself – – an oddly comfortable place in which to linger and even roll around – – a resting place that allows total inaction to pose as any number of “justifiable” imposters – – blame, self-pity, fear, resentment or righteous indignation, none of which will ever make anything better. Fixating on the problem is like being stuck in quicksand. You fight and fight, but you make no progress, in fact you lose ground.

I love what my nephew did because he reminded me of where God wants us to look…At what works, not what’s broken. It is that simple. God is never in the closed door; He is in the community beyond it. God is never in my problems and I will never find Him if I keep examining what’s wrong. I need to look up, stop complaining, stop blaming, or feeling sorry for myself, stop believing that internal dialogue and have the courage to seek out a solution, one small step at a time.

The simplest tool known to man is the wedge. God never makes “the next right thing” hard to recognize and once I move toward Him, doors open.