Courage To Step Through

“Open to me the gates of righteousness: I will go into them, [and] I will praise the LORD:” (Ps 118:19 AV)

You are probably going to laugh, but when I read the verse, the gates of the palace in the Wizard of Oz came to mind.  I imagined very huge gates when upon entering, life changes radically.  If you remember the movie, when the four main characters entered, they went through a great transition.  The Tin Man was polished and oiled.  The Scarecrow was re-stuffed and sown back to brand new condition.  The cowardly lion was bathed, shampooed, and styled.  Dorothy herself was cleaned up, given a new set of clothes and a bow was placed on Toto.  From head to toe, there four went through a process of rebranding that left the old Selves behind.  However, it could not happen unless there was a desperate desire for it.  As the story goes, Dorothy ran away from home and was caught in a tornado.  She was sucked up into the land of Oz.  It was there she understood she was wrong in wanting to flee her Aunt’s authority and from that time forward; she wanted to get back home.  Through one nightmare after another, she arrived at the land of Oz.  She was told the only one able to get her back home was the Wizard of Oz.  To get where she wanted to be all along; it took learning the lessons of the consequences of her actions and the courage to enter the gates of Oz.  What a tragedy it would have been had Dorothy faced all those obstacles to get to the land of Oz then lacked the courage to step through the gate.

The verse prior to our passage above speaks of the severe correction of God.  The Psalmist remarks the LORD had corrected him, yet he was not dead.  That was some severe correction!  But that is not our point.  Our point is simple.  When faced with the gates of righteousness; first, do we want them to open?  Second, will we go through them if they are?  Getting a glimpse of what it might be like inside the gates compared to what is outside is the key.  You see, if Dorothy had not faced the trees that tried to capture her, the monkeys that terrorized her, or the Wicked Witch of the West who wanted to kill her, the horse of a different color or the show of flames in the presence of a projected Wizard might not have seemed all that appealing.  If we are still enticed by sin and it does not appear far less appealing than righteousness, we will never go through the gates.  Not until we can look behind us at the wickedness, we are fleeing with a heart of disdain will we ever walk through the gates of righteousness.  It is not enough to prefer one of the other.  If that is the case, we will consider righteousness and wickedness as a revolving choice based on specifics.  Rather, the gate is a way of life.  It is not a series of ongoing choices over every detail.  It is a choice for a way of life that consists of smaller choices.

The writer of our psalm had had enough.  He had had enough of a life that was not pleasing to God but pleasing to himself.  He suffered the consequences of living a life like that.  He came to the end of himself and asked for the gates of righteousness be opened to him.  He didn’t come to open gates.  He asked for them to be open.  Righteousness was not a choice of preference.  It was a choice of conviction.  Until we face the gates of righteousness and seek the opening of them, we will dwell in the path of darkness.  Until we want the gates to be opened more than we want the pleasures of sin for a season, the gates will remain closed.  Until we are to where, it doesn’t matter what the other side of the gates might look like; all we know is where we are is unacceptable; then the gates will remain closed.  It takes a sin weary soul who is fed up with iniquity to seek the gates of righteousness.  The question is, are you?