I am a fan of mysteries, including the “locked room mystery.” The basic premise: a room is locked from the inside, and something (usually a murder) happens within the locked doors- how? I have my own version of a locked room mystery.
Yesterday, I was at a local hospital, visiting a church member. My preference is to take stairs instead of elevators whenever possible, but I had not been able to locate the stairway in this new-ish hospital. When I was leaving the room I was visiting, I saw a downstairs stairwell, so I took it. I opened the door onto the first floor, and I found myself in a passageway between the hospital and the doctor’s building. I tried the door to the hospital. Locked. I tried the door to the doctor’s building. Locked. I tried the door back into the stairwell. Locked. I was trapped. The only object in that locked hallway was a phone to security. I called security, and they promised to send someone to set me free.
As I was waiting in my locked room, a doctor in full scrubs appeared. “Can I help you out of here?” “Yes,” I said gratefully. “Sally?” he said. I looked more carefully under his puffy surgical cap and realized that I knew him from some years ago. He was on his way into surgery. In the thirty seconds that it took for him to use his key card to escort me back to the main hospital hallway, we reconnected. His life had taken some turns, and he was looking for a church. I knew which of our services would resonate most with his musical preferences and suggested it. He said he would come to worship this week. And then we parted ways.
With my apologies to Bogey in Casablanca, of all the locked hospital hallways in the world that he could have walked into, he walked into mine. Really, what are the odds of my getting lost in a surgical hallway in a hospital and running into a surgeon that I know personally, one who happens to be looking for a church? This is my locked-room mystery, and the question is the same: how? The answer is, thankfully, an easy and obvious one. I may not know the details, but the answer is the same as for any of the mysteries of life that I face: It’s a God thing. Who else could take a locked room and turn it into an avenue for possibility?
