“Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?” (James 2:5, ESV)
While you have been ranking people, God has been working from a different chart.
James is not inventing this. He grew up in the same house as Jesus, who stood in front of a crowd and said, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” When James writes that God chose the poor to be rich in faith, he is quoting his brother out loud.
And Jesus did not invent it either. From Abraham forward, God has chosen the unlikely. The younger over the elder. The shepherd over the warrior. The small nation over the empire. Paul names the same pattern. God chose what is weak to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised.
Now make it small enough to feel. You have been the unimpressive person somewhere. Someone overlooked you in a room. Someone ranked you low. You know what it feels like to be on someone’s stand over there.
And God picked you anyway. The reason your name is on the chart of the kingdom is not your resume. It is mercy. He picked you off a chart your own chart would have ranked you off of.
The same is true of the person next to you. The same is true of the new family in the lobby. God’s chart has their names on it. He picked them by the same mercy that picked you.
So Moses, the prophets, Jesus, James, and Paul are all writing from the same chart. The world ranks one way. God has always ranked another. He started this way. He stays this way. He will still rank this way on the last day. This is also where the season’s confession gets personal. We say we welcome Jesus into our everyday life. James says Jesus is already there, standing in the everyday person we were about to walk past.
Today: Remember one time someone ranked you low. Sit in it for a moment. Then thank God He picked you anyway. Then name one person you have ranked low, and remember they got on the chart the same way you did.