“Lord, what about him?” John 21:21
There is a great story about a Rabbi who grew tired of hearing about other people’s troubles. In his small town everybody knew everybody else’s business and there were no secrets.
One day the Rabbi made an announcement: “Next week I want everybody to write their troubles on pieces of rock and place them in a sack. Everyone will bring his or her sack to the synagogue, and we will leave them here for the whole weekend. Then on Monday you can choose which sack of troubles you would like to take home.”
Everybody agreed and the next Friday evening, there was a pile of sacks filled with rocks in the synagogue. Everyone enjoyed the weekend.
On Monday morning the Rabbi got up early and watched from his window. The people gathered in front of the sacks and looked at them and picked them up and weighed them, but eventually each one picked up his or her own sack and went home.
Be careful when you find yourself wishing you could live another person’s life. Appearances are deceptive. There are rocks in the other man’s sack that you wouldn’t want to carry.
If you find yourself wishing that you could have another person’s life, you have to include that person’s eternal reward, or perhaps the lack of it. Jesus said that the first will be last and the last will be first. If that’s true, you need to be careful about who you want to change places with.
Jesus calls you to follow Him, without conditions, and without comparisons. “What is that to you? You must follow me.”
Is there someone you’ve wanted to trade places with who might have more rocks in his or her bag than you were aware of?
