What is your reaction when you receive an invitation in the mail? Is your first reaction, “Oh no! Something else to take up my time”? Does it matter if it is the most important event you will ever attend? How do you feel when people accept your invitation but don’t show up?
Depending on the size of our families and our friend group, we may receive several invitations throughout the year. Sometimes, we simply want to reject the invitation. With all we have to do we just don’t have time for one more thing. But we may go so we do not disappoint them.
Jesus tells the parable about a king who invites all the “right” people to his son’s wedding banquet. When he sends his servants out to tell the invitees it’s time for the banquet, they decline to attend. This is arguably the biggest event they would attend in their entire lives, but they decline. They make an excuse that they have something more important to do or they are simply too tired. Whatever the excuse they do not go to the banquet.
Are we doing the same thing? Jesus invites us to follow Him. His invitation is to join Him at His banquet. We can attend “mini banquets” along the way to the final banquet. Unfortunately, too many people decline to attend. We can experience a foretaste of His final banquet each time we participate in Holy Communion. Yet, many will find an excuse for not participating with Him. The invitation is renewed each day. Jesus never rescinds His invitation. We can accept the most important invitation we will ever receive. Will we?
I pray we all know that Jesus has invited us to join Him? I pray we understand the importance of His invitation. I pray each one of us will accept Jesus’s invitation and participate in the “mini banquets” as we proceed toward the final banquet. Jesus has invited you. Accept Jesus’s invitation. Know that Jesus’s invitation is the most important one you will receive.
Matthew 22:1-3 Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come.”
