(photo by Mable Amber on Pixabay)

By Sister Michele Morek

Did you ever see the poster that said, “When God closes a door, he opens a window?” I like it. It reminds me of one of my favorite chores when I was a teenager: irrigating our apple orchard. In New Mexico you didn’t need convincing that Water is Life, and I think every farmer or gardener in the San Juan River Valley approached irrigation with something like reverence. But it was fun, too!

You went up the hill to the Big Ditch (a “Madre Acequia” in New Mexico) and raised the little wooden water gate that let the water down to your property. Gradually you directed the water down a series of small ditches until it flooded the orchard (all the while racing toy boats down with the torrent). Then you took off your shoes and splashed through the flooded grass.

All right, now I know – after teaching Environmental Science – that this was a wasteful way to use the water, leading to too much evaporation (now we would use drip irrigation.) But boy, was it fun!

Now I think about how God is directing the stream of my own life, or my community’s life, by opening one gate while closing off another. As people and groups to which I belong enter our wisdom years, and see certain doors closing to us, we watch for the next new water gate to open, eager to run joyfully down the courses chosen for us by God the Great Irrigator.

Jesus Christ will enlighten you about what you have to do…go forward willingly. (Saint Angela Merici, Last Legacy 5, 14)