“Mrs. Davis, you and your family will be VIPs for the entire weekend!” The kind lady on the phone shared this news after a nurse encouraged me to fill out an application from The Jack & Jill Cancer Foundation, a foundation that encourages families struggling with this disease. After seeing the hardship his two children endured as their mother died of breast cancer, Jon Albert honored his wife, Jill, by setting up a foundation to serve families going through similar struggles. “Since we are based in Atlanta, we usually bring families here,” the representative shared, “but since you live in Atlanta, we thought we’d send you elsewhere. Do you like baseball?” After Susan shared that we did she was told about a professional team that has partnered with their foundation. This team has had a pretty good season (they currently have the best record in baseball); they play in a place called Fenway Park.
This evening all five of us get to fly to Boston for a special weekend. (I told Susan it was good to be a VIP before I RIP. She didn’t think that was very funny…) Seriously, this is an incredible blessing. We are to explore the city Saturday morning and go meet the players and tour the park in the afternoon before watching the Red Sox play Saturday night. Not wanting to be like the nine ungrateful lepers, I’ll be sure to thank the team, the foundation, the hotel, and the chauffeurs that will drive us around. We would never dream of such extravagant treatment. Just being together as a family for the weekend will be the best part for me. I think that is what Mr. Alpert had in mind.
The Father has even better dreams for his children. He knows what each of us will face on this earth. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” He also said, “I am going to my Father’s house to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” This promise of a coming reunion is one of the things that gives us great hope, but I think there is another powerful truth the Father wants us to embrace. If you are a child of God, you are a VIP. Such a statement almost sounds too vain to write, but it is not my idea. If I go around calling myself a ‘very important person,’ I’ll be a nuisance, but if God calls me a VIP it is a different matter. Such a proclamation from above goes far beyond the sentiments we as parents have for our own children. In addition to saying, “You are loved, you are valuable, and you are constantly on my mind,” God says, “You are chosen, you are royal, and you are destined to reign.”
We say, “Who… me? I thought I was to be humble, lowly, and meek.” But believing what God says does not make one arrogant; it makes one wise. He says, “My children are ‘very important people’ with ‘very important responsibilities.’”
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires that war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” I Peter 2:9-12