When you decide to close a restaurant (like I did) or make any kind of career change, well-meaning people are quick to offer up a lot of advice. Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of comments that sound like this:

“Well, you know, when God closes one door, he always opens another.”

I know I’m cynical, so I can’t help thinking, “Just because there’s an open door, that doesn’t mean I’m the one meant to walk through it.”

Exhibit A:

Where did this phrase originate? And why is it always attributed to God? A little digging turned up this fun fact:

In 1605, Miguel de Cervantes now famous work Don Quixote offers up this quote:

“When one door is shut, another is opened.”

— Miguel de Cervantes

Then Johann Richter, Helen Keller, and Alexander Graham Bell all said:

“When one door closes another door opens but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

Yep. Apparently they all said those exact words. Weird, right?

I can think of a lot of “open doors” in the Bible and the people who walked through them paid dearly:

Remember when Abraham took Sarah’s maid to be his wife so he could have offspring through her? Open door. NOT a good idea to walk through it!

Or when Saul went into the cave and didn’t see David, who cut off a corner of his robe. “I could have killed you, but I didn’t!” He had a clear open door, and he didn’t take it. You know why? Because it would have been a bad idea!

The time wasn’t right.

And here lies the million dollar question:

How do you know when the time IS right?

I did find one instance where the phrase “open door” is actually used in the Bible. Paul says that God “opened a door for him.” But here’s the kicker: he immediately regretted walking through it.

“Now when I went to Troas to preach the gospel of Christ and found that the Lord had opened a door for me, I still had no peace of mind, because I did not find my brother Titus there. So I said goodbye to them and went on to Macedonia.” (emphasis mine)

He then gives thanks to God for using the trip to spread the gospel. Of course, that’s a lesson for another day. God doesn’t waste anything. That open door, though it didn’t yield what Paul had hoped, still brought glory to God.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to know which doors to walk through and which to leave closed. We want the decision to be easy.

Open door.
Walk through it.

But not every open door is a great idea. In fact, there’s a dilapidated house next to my neighborhood. I walk past it everyday on my way downtown. A lone rickety rocking chair beckons from the porch. I bet the front door is unlocked. I tried to get one of my kids to test it, but they were afraid a ghost would follow them home.

Some doors should remain closed forever.

Back to our problem. When should we try the doors in front of us? I came up with a list of questions to help me decide.

Does walking through this door compromise my personal values in any way?
Will walking through this door negatively affect my family?
Do I have the knowledge, skills, and support necessary for what this door will ultimately usher Into my life?

It’s obvious to me now that when I go searching for an open door what I’m really looking for is a miracle. I want God to show up in a big way, like he did on the third day when the stone had been moved and Mary and Mary Magdalene discovered that the tomb was empty or like the disciples who later huddled together in a room and mused that, “though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’

That’s all I really want. And isn’t that what you want too?