Your Place in Line

"Can you keep up?"~ Beyonce.

This one night a few years ago I was driving down the road. I looked at the car next to me and this guy I used to know in college was driving next to me with his window rolled down and was looking at me waving and shouting my name. We pulled over and had a little reunion on the side of the road. So we decided to go to a bar to hang out. After that night I never saw him again. But he said one thing that stuck with me since then. He had gone to Romania and people formed this long line to receive these health supplies they were distributing. "The thing is, everyone was pushing and shoving to get to the front, everyone was fighting over there place in line. How different yet alike we all are. Everyone in the world cares about their place in line."

It's so true. I think the world paints this false illusion that we are all in competition with one another to get to the front of the line. A collective voice of advertisements, tv, magazines, billboards, songs, etc, tells us that we need to buy this, be that, and look like this in order to keep up with each other, in order to get ahead. Spend your money, time and energy on whatever it tells you you need in order to push your way to the front. Even our driving reflects this truth, who can get to the stop light first? People obey the voice with such vigor and delight because it promises life and validation at the front.

And you know what would be really ironic and hilarious? If at the end of life God nonchalantly picked up the line by both ends with the tips of his fingers and turned it around making the front the back and the back the front. Then everyone who had worked so vigorously, spending their lives fighting to get to the front of the line would find that they just lost the "competition" they thought they were in. They would find that they were last. All that hard work to get themselves ahead just put them behind. And those who spent their lives letting others in and putting others ahead of themselves were humbly, casually, carelessly, selflessly making their way to the front with out even trying.

"but many who are first will be last, and the last first." ~ Jesus