Keys & Prayer

Matthew 7:7-8 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”

On a cold winter day up in the mountains, a boy was on holiday in a small village. There was no snow in the mountains yet, but the air was cold enough to see your breath and the boy had on a light coat, but not heavy enough to keep him warm for long in this weather. His lively family was laughing and chatting in the holiday cottage they were staying at, but he wanted to slip outside to pray. He told his family he was going to go outside to which they said it was too cold for that. He then revealed the real intent of his heart to go pray at the nearby church and then they paused, looked at each other, and gave permission instructing him not to be gone long.

This trip shouldn’t take him all that long. His heart was enraptured by the things of God and when he saw that little church up the narrow street, he wanted to go there. The church he had observed on the way into the village was preserved for historical purposes and not used for services anymore except for special occasions and this wasn’t one of them. He walked through the village called Panagia and up to the historical church, but he found all the doors locked. He peeked in through the cracks of the old wooden doors for any sign of someone being inside, but it was dark inside. He tried the doors again to be sure he didn’t need to pull the doors harder. They didn’t budge this time either.

He turned to leave in disappointment and then the wintery rain began to beat down on his light coat. He pulled up his hood and walked down the street where he spotted a cross peeking above the rooftops. “A cross up there must mean that there is another church nearby,” he thought to himself. So he walked more briskly down the winding street, turned left, and there it was: a much bigger church that would definitely be open for prayers.

He tried the door nearest him, but it was locked. His heart was struck with sadness, but he held out hope that the other side would be unlocked. He walked round the back of the church and to the other side. He found the side entrance with tall double doors. He just knew this one would open to him because his heart had led him here to pray. With both hands he pulled on the handle leaning his weight back as he did. But the door did not open. He pulled harder, but the deadbolt locking the doors refused to open to him.

A pang of anguish punctured his soul. He walked to the front corner of the church, but before rounding the corner, he was overcome with sorrow. With his back to the church wall, he slid down to the ground and shed tears as he prayed,

“How am I supposed to pray in the church if all of them are locked to me? Where am I to pray?”

With his head bowed low, he heard a woman ask him,

“Why are you crying?”

Without looking up at her because his face was red with shame and wet with tears, he buried his face in his knees and said,

“Because I wanted to pray in the church, but all of the doors were locked.”

As he finished the words two car doors slammed and footsteps were heard not too far away. She told him to “look” and he lifted up his face from his knees and peered round the corner of the church and there was a man with his wife at the front door of the church. The man inserted a key into the front door and with a click, click, the door was opened. The woman kindly told him “come” and offered her hand. Without looking at her face, but fully trusting her like a mother, he took her hand and she led him through the doors of the church.

Once inside, he let go of her hand and grabbed a beeswax candle to light it, but there were no other candles lit because the church had only just been opened. No matches to be found either. He looked round to see where he could light his candle, stepping over the floor tile formerly broken by a horse’s hoof, he spotted a flame in front of the iconostasis. The man who had opened the church with his wife was lighting a candle in front of the icon of the Theotokos. He walked up silently and lit his candle from that one. He carried his light and lit the candle in front of Christ and prayed for the world.