03-25-12 You're invited

You’re invited“Now go out to the street corners and invite everyone you see.” Matthew 22:9 (NLT)It’s one of the dilemmas of wedding preparation, and one of the reasons some just elope – who do you invite? The couple getting married makes a list, and starting with the closest relatives and their very best friends it spirals outward from there. What was originally a small intimate wedding can mushroom into the hundreds, and that’s before the mothers of the bride and groom get to check the list.“What you’re not going to invite the Nonnenmachers who were our neighbors when we lived in Coulterville?”“But Mom, we moved from there when I was four.”“But they still send us a Christmas card every year.”So the list grows, only to run into budgetary constraints. That’s when the folks who were going to be invited are being uninvited and they don’t even know it. And of course great attention has to be paid as to who will get their feelings hurt, and who has invited you in the past. Any misstep here can cause hard feelings that have the potential to linger for decades (I am not making this up).Long before the happy couple has to craft a guest list for their wedding they will have gained experience in this sort of thing going way back to kindergarten. Oh the headaches and politics of birthday party invitations. Since your Mom was in all likelihood very smart she probably said something like, “You can invite five friends to your birthday party.” See what I mean, because right there you were faced with a cut line. Sure, you knew you could squeeze a few more out of your Mom, seven, eight, and if you were really good even ten. Yup, I remember it well the social jockeying of those formative years. The girls, however, they had levels of drama and manipulation us boys could only dream of.I am glad I will never know how many times I have been scratched off an invitation list, aren’t you. And I know that unless something really crazy happens my name will not appear on Hollywood’s A-list, nor is it likely my name will appear on an invitation to the White House. I did get an invitation to appear in traffic court once.Somehow though my name, and yours, appears on the most important invitation list of all – God’s. Unbelievable you and I are invited to be part of the Jesus’ wedding feast in the kingdom of heaven. And in fact God is still sending out more invitations, we get to invite all of our friends, there is no cut line, no budgetary constraints, no politics to be played, no drama to avoid. All are invited, so let them know.What great words, “You are invited,” especially when they come from God. I am going, are you?To God be the glory, love you, Pastor Hans