It was 10:30 at night when someone pounded on our front door. While I was debating what to do, they pounded again and so did my heart. Peter is tall enough to look out the high windows on our door and recognized our neighbor so we opened the door and invited him in.

The background of this story is that we have prayed for this neighbor ever since we’ve moved into this house a few years ago. Our encounters with him have been very few, but always pleasant and friendly. Matt (not his real name) and his family pretty much stayed to themselves but we continued to pray for opportunities. In the meantime, I took over desserts occasionally and talked to their kids when they were playing in their yard…and prayed.

And then the knock on our door at 10:30 at night. Matt came in and began to tell us his recent struggles – they had separated, were moving out, he had tried to commit suicide, etc. All this from a neighbor we had seldom spoken to. Talk about opportunity knocking – in this case pounding.

We listened and then began to gently ask him about where God fit into his life…or if God fit into his life. He explained his background with an extremely religious father who would beat them, so…no, he didn’t want much to do with God. But opportunity had knocked and so we began to share how God felt about him – about God’s powerful and personal love for him. He listened with very little response. And then we prayed for him.

The wonderful ending would be that he responded to what we had shared and accepted the Lord that night. That’s not the ending of this story. We don’t know the ending yet. We just know that we had prayed for an opportunity, and opportunity came knocking and we opened the door.

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