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Good Morning Covenant Family,

I’ve been contemplating one aspect of the story we looked at on Sunday, and how, for Israel, it became essential for their moving forward. It is something that I think we can underestimate the significance of on our own journey. I’m going to talk about the mercy of a closed door in this Covenant Weekly for October 6, 2026.

In 2014, after years of preparation in different forms, I stood in front of a group of pastors and leaders as they evaluated my fit for credentialed pastoral ministry in the denomination I had already pastored in for over fifteen years. I made a brief presentation and then answered questions for close to a couple of hours, after which a small group of those present withdrew to a small room to talk. After a lengthy time of deliberation, at the insistence of a couple of people in that group, they came back with a verdict. I didn’t belong among them. My convictions didn’t align enough with their convictions in some areas they deemed essential. The result was that I could still serve as a pastor at my local church, but they would never recommend me as a formal fit within the denomination I’d been a part of for almost 40 years.

I was hurt. Friends and congregants were shocked and confused. Several ministry colleagues with decades of wisdom and experience were angry on my behalf and disappointed they weren’t able to be present to change the nature of the deliberations. But ultimately, a door that I had been working towards walking through for a decade was slammed shut. Truthfully, I’d been struggling to understand my fit within that setting for a number of years. It was only now that, as I wrote later in a song, they had “pushed me so far I couldn’t deny” that I had no long term place among them.

Having a door slammed shut can feel shocking. It can be incredibly hard. In the story we read on Sunday, Israel had been pressed against the sea, any way back was blocked by an army and a pillar of cloud. But those didn’t amount to the door slamming shut. They could have surrendered to Pharaoh and marched a long slow walk back into slavery. Instead, though, they crossed the Red Sea. And on the other side is where the door, in the form of rushing waters, slammed shut. God led them out and the door crashed closed behind them. They couldn’t go back to Egypt.

This slammed door was ultimately a blessing to them. By the end of chapter 15, the people are grumbling against Moses again. But there is no way for them to go back. By chapter 16, they are lamenting and wishing they had died in Egypt. But the door was shut. There was no way to return. Eventually they wandered the wilderness for 40 years. If there was a way back, they would have taken it. But it wasn’t cracked open even a little bit.

The sea-door being closed behind them was actually a mercy. It kept them from the default direction they would have taken. Without it, they never would have made it to the land God had promised them through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In my own life, the closed door that hurt so much at the time, eventually led me to find a home in the Be In Christ Church of Canada. It led me to Covenant Church and the gift of an amazing community of people humbly trying to follow Jesus together. Without that closed door, who knows how many years I would have fought to remain in a setting where I couldn’t thrive and was in constant tension. The closed door, as hard as it was in the moment, was a mercy for me.

On your journey, can you look back and see any doors that were closed that you can now see were a mercy. A closed door that ultimately led you into a beautiful place of grace and thriving? Sometimes that comes through the end of a relationship you fought for years to sustain. Or maybe an unanticipated job loss. Sometimes it can be a breakdown or burnout that left your previous way of living unsustainable. Usually, there is nothing easy about a door being slammed in our face. But if God is working, and we believe God is always working, that isn’t the end of the story. It may be just the beginning of God showing divine mercy to us as we move forward with God, and with no way to turn back.