Article April 13, 1981 Issue

"Open ye the gates"

MURIEL ROADMAN

The full verse from Isaiah reads: "Open ye the gates, that the righteous nation which keepeth the truth may enter in."^{Isa. 26:2.} Church edifices today open their doors to welcome strangers, just as ancient cities opened their gates. But more than human gestures is needed to reach and meet the needs of our fellowmen. Unless the love in our hearts extends to spiritually hungry mankind, our welcome will go unheeded.

Our need is to demonstrate a welcome that corresponds to God's open door of universal salvation. Just as Christ Jesus purified the sinner and healed the sick, our mental gates must be open to admitting the sinful and sick into our fold and healing them. Is anyone too sinful, too impoverished, too ignorant to be enfolded into the infinite love of God's Christ? We must see that all, in their real being, are already enfolded.

Selfish thinking, which closed the doors to Jesus' teachings, would infiltrate the human institution of church and adulterate the church's true purpose with a twisted material sense of goodness, which is self-righteousness. Hypocritical thought would obstruct the light of the universal Christ, which heals and restores. A practicing Christian condemns sin but longs to uplift and release the individual from it. Thus the receptive heart is reached.

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