An Exit Strategy

We bought our first home, “owner finance”, in 1987; because it was owner financed there was no bank to say we needed to have it inspected, and so we didn’t! We knew it was a fixer-upper, and due to our youthful ignorance, we assumed we were up to the task. 

But it didn’t take long to figure out it was also hazardous, in more ways than one. Our first Valentine’s dinner was bittersweet. Sweet because it was our first Valentine’s dinner in our own home, and bitter because as I was walking back toward the kitchen, I heard a whooshing noise under the floor.  The ancient iron bar that protruded through the floor for turning off the water did not turn off the water.  So on Valentine's Day Bruce had to crawl under the house with a flashlight to turn off the water! The old steel pipes had sprung a leak. 

But that was not all! Besides the old two pole wiring we saw in the attic, we also discovered that the house had had a serious fire. The original roof, which we could still see, had the burned cedar shingles. Further evidence that we could see was the charred 2x4’s reused in the attic and in the walls! Plus we found a very old door in the attic that had once graced the front of the house that had burn marks on it. Only half of it was left, but it was still massive, in my opinion, at 46”wide and 2 1/2” thick! The missing top half must have had glass. It was very heavy, so we left it there.

On the advice of a friend, who worked for TXU, we rewired the house.  Some of the original 2x4’s, even though burned were sturdy enough to leave where they were. The old door stayed put, too, collecting dust and waiting for a creative urge to strike and repurpose it.

When we moved this past year after living there for 32 years, I used all my Yankee ingenuity and engineer’s daughter gene to leverage it out of its hiding place. I wanted to take it with me. One of my friends who bought and sold antiques saw it and said, “You have a coffin door!” 

“Coffin doors” were put into many older homes to do exactly what the name implies. It allowed its owners to bring a coffin in and out of the house. The benefit of having such a door was so that the family could have their deceased loved one “laid out” at home for the wake. It was like having a “pre-need” plan.

Such thinking acknowledges the inevitable: We will all have to meet with death. In essence, the old door was an “exit” door. 

Recently, after a spate of tragic mass shootings, I was talking to a man about how to protect ourselves. A military veteran and licensed to carry, he suggested a very basic strategy that anyone can employ; whenever he enters a restaurant or theater, he locates the nearest exit. One way to survive a crazed shooter is to know where the exit door is in order to escape. In other words, we need to have an exit strategy, before we need it.

Any time we consider the unplanned events of life, be it an accident on the highway, a sudden illness, or a suicidal person with a gun, we are faced with the uncomfortable reality of death. How do we prepare for it? Is there anything we can do to assure a good outcome, either to stay alive, or to have an idea of our eternal destination? We need to have an exit strategy. And we need to plan for that in advance.

In the Bible in the book of John, Jesus’ beloved disciple John presents another one of Jesus’ amazing “I am” statements. Jesus said, “ I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture,” John 10:9.  To “enter through [Him] is a metaphor for believing in Him. If we are looking for an exit door that leads to eternity once we leave this life, Jesus is it. In John 14:6 Jesus says, “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The author, the apostle John, carefully crafted this gospel account for the express purpose stated in John 20:31: “But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”  The word these refers to the compendium of seven miraculous signs that Jesus performed. John selected these seven signs out of the many miracles from Jesus’ life in order to present the reader with evidence of how Jesus could make the claims He did. Not only did He claim to be the Son of God, the great I AM or Jehovah, but Jesus demonstrated by the seven signs that John records that as the Son of Man He could die, and as the Son of God He be could be resurrected and secure eternal life for those who would put their faith in Him. Faith in Him and what He did through His death and resurrection would provide assurance that once a person died, they, too, could enjoy eternity in a resurrected body. As Jesus said to Martha, before He physically resurrected her brother, Lazarus, who had been dead for four days,  “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,  and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”  She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.” John 11:25-27.

The time to believe is now! Notice Jesus said “and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” The decision needs to be made before we die. This is God’s exit strategy” for us! We can count on what He says, and He only speaks the truth. He keeps His promises, and this is His promise to us: “everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.”

Believe in Him for eternal life and you will know where the exit door is for eternity with Him!