Take off your shoes and enjoy the party

We were to depart on our last day in Guatemala around 9:30 a.m. to take a van to the airport and then catch our flight back to Atlanta, landing around 6:00 p.m.  I had put on some relatively clean clothes and shoes and went about the last couple of hours in Guatemala trying to stay relatively dust, sweat, and dirt free in anticipation  of our long journey together in close quarters.  I figured I might be able to catch up on e-mail and maybe check on a couple things on line with the painfully slow dial up internet access in the office of the children's home where we had worked during our stay there.

So I walked down from the school across a dirt/dust playing field where a couple of children where kicking around the omnipresent soccer ball, laughing, and getting sweaty, dirty, and dusty.  As I negotiated the perimeter of the field, one of the youngsters who I had already identified as having a keen sense of awareness, wisdom, and consciousness of the present moment walked up to me and said very matter-of-fact: "Hey, why don't you take off your shoes and enjoy the party?"

What a great question.  I'm still formulating my answer, but I didn't take off my shoes.  I did realize though at that moment, how much I was enjoying the party.

We need first and foremost to be able to take off our shoes and enjoy the party.  As leaders in discipleship, we also need to be willing to ask others why not  join us.

Whether or not they do doesn't matter as much as the invitation.