Barbara’s invitation to a feast

The other night the long table in Barbara’s Victorian house with the grand winding staircase was set for 20. In the living room by the ceiling-high Christmas tree was a station for a children’s art project: stocking snowmen. A table was laden with hors d’oeuvres, and a roaring fire in the fireplace was for the added delight of the invited guests: the entire staff of Produce Junction, all immigrants, whom Barbara had invited weeks ago and who all said yes, and whom she reminded several times during the week and offered rides to, and whom she went out to gather at 5 o’clock when her food was all prepared.

None of them came. They all in turn gave excuses for their inability to attend the Christmas banquet.

Sound familiar? Once, at another dinner 2,000 years ago, a man exclaimed to Jesus:

“Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” (Luke 14:15, ESV)

Well, you would think so. You would think an invitation to a great banquet—a free banquet—would be the most blessed thing. But Jesus had to correct His fellow diner’s misappraisal of human nature, being more knowledgeable of what is in man (John 2:24–25). He knew that heaven sounds good to people in theory, but the fact is, they prefer other things, the seen over the unseen, fearing, perhaps, that heaven may be boring:

“A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come’” (Luke 14:16–20, ESV).

Piper, Linda, Heidi, Zach, Ian, Natalie, and my husband and I, though not the original invitees, did not mind being asked to the feast as an afterthought. This also was according to the parable:

“Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame” (Luke 14:21, ESV).

God had His purposes, higher than ours. As for me, I was inspired by Barbara to be bold and creative for the kingdom of God. He looks for our “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 1:3, ESV), and Barbara’s labor was nothing if not prompted by faith and love and hope. This, not the visible outcome, is what matters. This is the labor for which she will not lose her reward (Matthew 10:42).