We love to get them.

We don’t always love the ‘going.’

Many of us have an invitation sitting in our phones right now, like a text about a birthday dinner for a great friend this weekend, and the reply keeps getting pushed to later because a ‘yes’ means committing and a ‘no’ means disappointing someone.

So the message stays unanswered.

The parable Jesus tells us this Sunday has guests who are invited to a wedding feast and give reasons that sound entirely plausible: a farm to look after, a business to run. I recognize myself in this because busyness doesn’t really feel like a refusal when we’re in the moment; it feels like a full week.

And whose weeks aren’t full these days?

Because we know saying yes is the easy part; the ‘going’ is where it costs us something. It means committing to showing up and being present.

God’s invitations tend to arrive the same way this dinner text does, in the middle of ordinary days with myriad things going on. They might look like a person who could use a phone call, an old, stubborn disagreement that a loving conversation could solve, or a pew we haven’t sat in for a while.

These invitations sit unanswered in the same place as that text message.

This week’s lesson reminds us that every invitation carries the same intent: someone wants us at the table. 

Someone has already set a place and is hoping to see us in it.

God’s invitations carry it too, and the parable shows how far the wanting goes. When the first guests turn the feast down, the king sends his servants out again, this time to the main roads, because the feast is going ahead and he wants the hall full.

God has set a seat for us this week, as real as the one at the birthday dinner, and it is waiting in the same place as that text, in the phone call we owe and the pew we haven’t sat in for a while. ‘Going’ is how an invitation sitting unanswered becomes time spent with the one who asked for us.

This week’s invitation: If you see yourself in today’s post, find the invite you’ve left hanging and answer it today. Then take a minute to tell God you’re available for whatever he might ask of you this week. Saying yes in small things, and then showing up for them, is how we get ready for the bigger invitation.

God Bless.

FF