The Doors That Opened on Easter Morning

When Hurricane Helene tore through Swannanoa, North Carolina in September 2024, the floodwaters gutted First Baptist Church down to the studs. Mud caked the pews. The piano sat warped and silent. Members scattered to gyms and living rooms for months of makeshift worship, wondering if they would ever walk through those doors again.

Five months later, on a cold February Sunday, volunteers from eleven different congregations finished the last coat of paint. Pastor Rick stood at the entrance that morning, hand on the new door handle, and could not speak for a full thirty seconds. Then he pulled it open, and seventy-three people who had wept in that parking lot walked back inside singing.

They did not sing softly. They sang the way people sing when they have been delivered — full-throated, tear-streaked, grateful beyond language. "His love endures forever" was not a theological abstraction that morning. It was the floor beneath their feet. It was the roof over their heads. It was the neighbors who showed up with drywall and casseroles when everything seemed lost.

The psalmist knew this kind of gratitude. "Open for me the gates of righteousness," he cried, "that I may enter and give thanks to the Lord." These are not the words of someone strolling casually into worship. These are the words of someone who almost did not make it — and knows exactly Whom to thank.

The Almighty specializes in doors that open after the flood.