Do we fondly imagine that people ought to love us just the way we are? We are told often enough that God loves us warts and all. But do we carry this belief through life with not much thought of    betterment?

In today’s parable a king invites guests to his son’s wedding. When the guests refuse to turn up, the king extends the invitation to a different set of guests, both good and bad. The guests fill the wedding hall, but as they do so, the king notices one man not wearing a wedding robe and he has him bound hand and foot and thrown out into the darkness! The consequences for not wearing the right outfit seem overly harsh as far as this poor guest is concerned, but of course the parable has not really very much to do with wedding receptions and even less to do with wearing the right tie. The overriding theme in this story is to do with standards.

Jesus explains that the Kingdom of God is open to all but that doesn’t mean that anyone and everyone can stroll into heaven. Just as guests make an effort to be correctly dressed for a wedding, so too must we put in the preparation and effort to be accepted into God’s Kingdom.

The guest who was thrown out of the wedding feast for his cavalier ‘accept me just the way I am’ attitude presents a warning for us all. Too often we go about our daily routines not feeling any need to live life better. Far too often we look on our Christianity as making choices between good and evil, and we are confident that we rarely choose evil. But Jesus is asking more of us than simply choosing between right and wrong, he is asking us to choose between good and an even greater good. What we imagine is our ‘best’ very rarely is.

Just as the guest in today’s parable did little more than turn up to the wedding, so we live life going through the motions but not much more. Accepting God’s invitation to join him is only the first step, it’s how we live out that acceptance that really matters.