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Luke 14:8-11

 ⁸ “When you are invited to a wedding feast, don’t sit in the seat of honor. What if someone who is more distinguished than you has also been invited? ⁹ The host will come and say, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then you will be embarrassed, and you will have to take whatever seat is left at the foot of the table! ¹⁰ “Instead, take the lowest place at the foot of the table. Then when your host sees you, he will come and say, ‘Friend, we have a better place for you!’ Then you will be honored in front of all the other guests. ¹¹ For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Of course this parable is about humility and it makes me think about going to a wedding reception and sitting at the head table when you are not part of the wedding party. How embarrassing would it be when you are told to move. Or perhaps going to an event with tickets in hand and setting in the wrong  then just after saying how great the seats are being told you are in the wrong section, then finding out your tickets are in the nose bleed section. Then on the other hand finding out just the opposite would be awesome, getting to move up to the good seats. Just before reading this parable I had read this story in the news.

A DESERT sheikh has carved out a big name for himself —by having his moniker etched in capital letters visible from space.

 Workmen scoured "HAMAD" into the sand on the orders of Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan. The name is two miles across — with letters a kilometre high. It is so huge that the "H", the first "A" and part of the "M" have been made into waterways. The mega-rich sheikh, 63 — a member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi — in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates — boasts a £14billion fortune that is second only to the Saudi king's. 

Not what I would call humility, thinking that much of yourself that you need to have your name seen from space. But as the parable Jesus told and the story about seeing your name from space indicates pride has been a problem since the beginning of time and will always be a problem until Jesus returns again. The bottom line is at judgment day you may be surprised at the people that are asked to move up or down. Spend the time you have on this earth now understanding your place at the table. If you place Jesus and others ahead of yourself now is how you will be asked to move up in the end when it counts.