One weekend, our church choir recorded a new album for Word Music. Microphones were pointed at the first row. The minute you walked in, you knew: the best singers were already on the first row. That was the all-star team. I’d like to say I did not think about it, that I was not ambitious. But I did think about it. I wanted to be on the first row. I thought I was good enough to be on the first row. But it was stupid and petty and it was making my head spin. So I talked to my father and the other men around me, walked with them to the top row, and cut up and had fun. They were good-hearted men who loved the Lord and sang because they were servants. They could not read music. But they were down-to-earth and I enjoyed worshipping with them. Then it got quiet. The director was at the mic.
“Steven. What are you doing up there? We need you down here on the front row.” He gestured. “Come on, bring your stuff. Y’all slide over and make a spot for him. Steven, stand right there in the middle.”
That was a great feeling. A Bible passage rang in my ears:
“When you go to a party, don’t sit at the best place, because a more distinguished person than you may arrive and the host may come to you and say, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in humiliation, you will proceed to take the lowest place. Instead, when you are invited to a party, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when the one who invited you comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ You will then be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted” Luke 14:8-11.
God, train us with humble actions—sitting with the “regular folks,” working in a cubicle, driving an old car—but more than that, GIVE US HUMBLE THOUGHTS. Help us love as equals, setting aside status.
Read Luke 14.
ΑΩ
Household Words: 