Lessons from A Disney World Line

I worked at Walt Disney World for nearly ten years in a variety of capacities, and in those ten years, I saw just about every strange thing a person could see at an amusement park... and then some.

There are thousands of stories that I could tell about my adventures working for "The Mouse," but the one that comes to mind today was inspired by the following line from a poem by the poet Dobby Gibson:

The mob didn't know what it had surrounded,yet this became the reason it grew thicker.  -  "Since We Last Met"

As I read that line from the poem, I remembered an afternoon when I was working in the Magic Kingdom and watched a group of people began to stand near the queue area for one of the attractions.

I guess they thought they were waiting in the actual line, even though they weren't even close.

In a moment, a few others began to line up behind them.  Before long, there was a long line behind the original line-formers.  I stood watching the whole thing--waiting to see how long it would take before anyone noticed they weren't in an actual line.

They didn't.  I eventually had to go and tell them, and move them over to the right place.

Sometimes I feel like our culture is like that.  So many people just get in line behind a few, misguided line-formers,  who aren't really going anywhere.  And before you know it, the mob grows thicker and thicker as it attracts more and more people simply because they see a crowd.

I feel like Jesus wants to call us out of that line.  He wants to open our eyes up to the reality that far too many of us are simply shuffling forward in a wide path that leads to nowhere.

Jesus calls us to walk in a narrower way, however.  The way of Jesus might be harder to navigate at first on account of its narrow passage, and the difficult places it leads, but it's definitely going somewhere--to eternal life, both now and forever. 

May you find the courage to step out of the stymied and stuck line of the wide path, and find your way forward to the "eternal" abundance of the life Jesus wants for you.  May this courage be real for you both now and for always.

And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you always. Amen.