Our apartment was unusually quiet for a miraculous thirty seconds. I was in the living room, basking in the glorious silence when my puppy started scratching against the bedroom door, whimpering. When I’m home, she doesn’t like to be apart from me, even for one minute. Didn’t she know I’d left the door open for her?

Forcing myself to my feet, I trudged down the hallway to see what the problem was. Somehow, the once wide-open door had closed to a crack. If my puppy had been resourceful enough, she could have used her nose or paw to nudge her way through. Instead, she sat there, helpless—staring me down with those puppy-dog eyes as though I’d abandoned her.

Sometimes, we live under the notion that we’re stranded—stuck behind a door that’s slammed in our face, when all along that door would open with the slightest nudge. In fact, it’s already open—we just don’t see it. We may feel abandoned by God, but truly he’s made a way for us to be close to him. It says so in his word: “he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him” (2 Samuel 14:14).

When God sent his son Jesus to die for us, he made a way for us to be reconciled to him. If we feel far from him, it’s not because he hasn’t made a way for us—it’s because we haven’t walked through the door he opened for us. Ravi Zacharias put it most eloquently, “I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him.” God is only as far as we’ve run from him.

If you feel far from God, ask him to open your eyes to see the open door he has set before you. Pray for strength to stop running far in the wrong direction—to turn from where you are and to return to the God who knows you, loves you, and has the power to set you free.