When I lived in Chicago, I sometimes walked past Graceland Cemetery. It’s surrounded by an eight-foot-high brick wall. I don’t know if the wall was meant to keep people out or keep something else in, but the only entrance was through the front gate. One year I visited Unity Chapel in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The thing that struck me was that its cemetery had a gate, but no wall.

What good are gates without a fences or walls? They are part of liminal space, a way of moving from one place and condition to another. Cemetery gates mark a transition from the land of the living to the realm of the dead. Similarly, church doors symbolize the passage from the secular world to the sacred world.

Doors and gates can have a psychological impact. Anyone who has walked into a room and wondered why they came in has experienced the “doorway event” that wipes out a part of memory.

Gates are mentioned over 300 times in the Bible. One of my favorites is Psalm 100:4 “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name.” You can picture walking through the gates of the Temple singing a song of thanksgiving. But the word can also be used symbolically as when Jesus tells his disciples “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.”

Doors and gates might make us forget things, but I hope they can also remind us of the one who is the Way to the Father.

Read John 10:6-9 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne