My daughter's sixth-grade Social Studies teacher prepared to teach hierarchy as it played out in other countries and times by incorporating an object lesson. All the kids were to pick their government role from a bowl—queen, king, peasant, or serf—and come to class the following day dressed in their new identity.
Excitedly, her friends hoped to pick queens and princesses, but my daughter hoped to pick a peasant since that would be the easiest for which to find clothing. But when she opened her slip of paper defining her new role, she discovered she was a queen.
I couldn't help but think of the Bible and the parable Jesus told of a person being invited to a wedding, choosing the higher-up seat with the chiefs, and then having the host ask them to move down to a lower place. The host had reserved that seat for someone else.
My heart saw the reverse before me as the teacher assigned my daughter an elegance she did not seek. Additionally, my daughter would probably make everybody around her feel just as royal.
As believers, we should listen for God to speak to our hearts, reminding us to wait humbly on His timing. In the meantime, we must put others first and God at the center of everything.
Think of ways to serve the Lord through peasant thinking.
Doreen Frick is a writer and a lover of good words. Thus, the Bible is very much a center of her life. Her dad loved to write and always believed his daughters would become writers.