When you visit certain theme parks and pay extra, you receive a pass that lets you skip the lines. We call ahead to a busy restaurant, making a reservation and ensuring a table waits for us when we arrive. In busy stores I connive to move to the front of the line. I prefer a favored status, a fast-pass through Walmart.

God started to change Peter’s misconceptions of favorites through dreams. After meeting believers in the house of Cornelius, a godly Roman centurion, Peter exclaimed: I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right.

No favored status exists with the Lord, but no outsider status exists either. A godly lineage is awesome, but what have you decided for yourself? Raised by scoundrels? The Lord welcomes you with open arms. We each choose on our own.

It matters not your nationality or your ethnicity. In heaven we’ll meet people from every tribe, tongue, people and nation—every ethnos.

What matters is that we fear the Lord and do what is right. A good prescription for living in this world, and for joining the heavenly throng to come.

Acts 10 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo by Madeleine Maguire