Threshold anxiety. You may not find this malady in psychology books, but our cat Augie has it.
All fifteen pounds of cat huddle near the door, scratching a corner to let us know it's time to go out. But when someone comes and opens the door, the cat hesitates.
Who knows what's running through its mind? Is my arch enemy, the one that left me with ragged ears, lurking behind the hedge? How cold/hot is it? How soon will the humans let me back in after my rounds? Is that prickly door mat still there?
A gentle nudge on the cat's back legs encourages him to make that giant leap over the threshold and the hated prickly door mat.
Our cat's antics make me think about life's thresholds, like the one described in Psalm 84:10: "Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked."
In Hebrew, the original language of Psalms, "doorkeeper" is saphaph, meaning "to keep oneself at the threshold." It's the only time that word is used in the Bible.
Oh yes, there are other mentions of "doorkeepers," such as those named as doorkeepers of the ark (1 Chronicles 15:23, 24). The word there is shoer and it means--surprise!--"keeper of the door." These men were essentially "sacred bouncers," charged with stopping foot traffic at the most sacred part of the temple that housed the Ark of the Covenant.
But the saphaph doorkeeper had more than security duties on his heart. The psalmist begins with phrases that almost gush out of his heart: "How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty." Then the deep, irrepressible emotion: "My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord. My heart and my flesh cry out for the living God."
Having had a glimpse of eternity, this person isn't satisfied with spiritual mediocrity. He wants God to overwhelm him, to quench the deep thirst of his heart.
He's at a spiritual threshold.
No wonder, later in the psalm, that he picks his most-wanted spot: doorkeeper at the threshold of God's courts and house.
Thresholds are typically the timber or stone under a door. They help seal out bad weather and offer security from those who might dig under a door--at least in the olden days of houses plopped on a piece of ground.
And here's the application: Jesus is the threshold.
He died on the cross-shaped timbers.
He was the stone that the builders rejected (Psalm 118:22).
He bids us stand on Him, the link between the temporal and the eternal. He is pleased when we yearn, even faint, for the courts of the Lord. It's worship when our hearts and flesh cry out for the living God.
Someday, we'll pass over that threshold to Heaven. We'll see Him face to face, blessed beyond blessing beyond blessing, all our anxieties forgotten.
Join me at the threshold?
