Rsvping To God

Come to Me, all you who labor . . . and I will give you rest.

Matthew 11:28

Many of the practices of Western etiquette came from the French court of King Louis XIV in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. At his palace, Versailles, Louis XIV had the rules for court behavior written on “tickets,” or etiquette. It’s also why our familiar RSVP means “Répondez, s’il vous plait”—Respond, if you please.

Jesus told a parable about how the Jewish nation politely RSVPed to God—but with the wrong reply. When God sent Jesus to the Jews as their Messiah, they should have interpreted His invitation to “come to Me” (Matthew 11:28–30) as an invitation to enter God’s eternal kingdom. But they made up excuses to reject God’s invitation. In the parable, the recipients of the invitation to a great banquet replied that, sorry, they were too busy. So the host reissued the invitation to the forgotten of society, the inhabitants of the highways and byways, and brought them in. Those to whom the invitation was originally sent missed out on that chance to enter the kingdom.

If you’ve RSVPed to God with a “Sorry, too busy,” you might want to reconsider—and accept! When an invitation comes from God, failing to respond is the same as saying no.