The Long Line
“Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Matthew 7:13-14
When I saw an article headline about how to avoid long lines in the most popular attractions, my heart sank. I didn’t read the article not just because I don’t read so much in the media anymore, but because I don’t need help learning how to avoid long lines at the world’s top attractions. The more I have turned away from the world and cleaved to the Lord and His ways, the less I have found myself in lines at all. Spending time in the glorious presence of the Lord praising and adoring Him, studying His Word and learning to walk in His ways, loving and learning about Him, drawing ever nearer to Him as He draws nearer to me, hungering and thirsting to know Him more, to see His glory, to experience His love, how unpopular this all is in the eyes of this perishing world as it moves ever farther from Him.
I’ve stood in lines at concerts, sports events, grocery stores, malls, bars, airports, train stations, in traffic, just about everywhere imaginable to get to something or someone this world offers to try to satisfy my flesh with worldly pleasures and pursuits.
There isn’t much of a line when it comes to the Lord, is there? The gate is narrow to enter into His Kingdom. Why? A price must be paid. It’s the price of denying the flesh by getting out of the world’s long lines and turning away from what’s popular when it’s ungodly and unholy and displeasing to God, and entering into the joy and fulfillment of God forever. The price is the pain our flesh endures when we say no to temptation; the rejection that comes when the world ridicules, hates, and scoffs at us for choosing the Lord instead of this world; and how on our own we may be when we choose the Lord and His righteous ways instead of the ways of this world. The flesh does not want to be denied. The flesh does not want to die to self. Sometimes the pain of that denial is searing.
But NOTHING and NOBODY in the world brings the indescribable everlasting life, love, peace, joy, hope, promises, fellowship, fulfillment, friendship, satisfaction, desire, thrill, longing for more, intimacy, completeness, and infinite blessings that come from the Lord when we leave the world’s lines behind and take a front row seat at His feet
Are you standing in the world’s ungodly long lines – or kneeling in love, humility, reverence, awe, and astonishment at the Lord’s feet?