Not invited

As an English teacher, I get to go to a lot of certificate ceremonies. I also go to other events, ones for weddings, haircuttings, circumcisions, prayers, coming-of-age, and etc. For every event, there are those who attend who are invited, and those who attend who weren't invited.

But the way they attend is different.

Those who have been invited dress up. The ladies do their hair and makeup, and wear nice clothes, down to mile-high heels. The men will wear a suit, a prayer cap, and oftentimes a prayer robe too.

Those who have been invited walk directly into the event. If the event is held outside, it's normally marked off by cloth walls and banners, making the area quite festive. The invited guests see the walls and banners and walk right in, finding a seat where they expect fits their place in society and visiting with other friends who are there.

Those who haven't been invited don't bother to dress up at all, they just stand around outside. Now when I said that there are cloth walls, they normally are only about half-walls, hitting chest-high on me. This makes it so any child in the neighborhood who wants to watch the event can do so, either by standing on a slight hill, sitting on a nearby rooftop, or standing near the entrance. Some kids are big enough to see over the wall, and more power to them.

Guess which ones were invited?

At the beginning of an event, the inside crowd normally outnumbers the outside one, but by the end, well, the outside one can get pretty thick. Especially when it's an English ceremony that involves songs and skits.

I was sitting in a ceremony the other day pondering this thought, about those invited and those not. And so thankful that we're all invited into the Kingdom. There's no standing outside for that party!