Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.
- Matthew 23:34
Wisdom reposes in the heart of the discerning
and even among fools she lets herself be known.
- Proverbs 14:33
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.
- Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
I will sing of the Lord’s great love forever;
with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known
through all generations.
- Psalm 81:1
“The letters RSVP stand for the French expression répondez s’il vous plait, meaning ‘please respond.’ The purpose of this book is to help us identify and welcome those special people God sends into our lives, but if we believe that God has a hand-picked guest list for our lives, it stands to reason that He’ll have us on the guest lists for others’ lives. Throughout the book, when you see the letters RSVP, we’ll be turning the tables and examining our own potential influence in the lives of others.
“I’m challenging you, as you begin to discover the guest list for your own life, to also be intentional about your influence in the lives around you.”
- Debbie Macomber, God’s Guest List: Welcoming Those Who Influenced our Lives
I was in my favorite used bookstore the other day, about six weeks ago, and I found a Debbie Macomber book on the clearance rack. I paid for the book. It was not a free book, but it was less than a dollar.
I love the Macomber Christmas Angel books. There are three angels, Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy. They mean well but nothing turns out the way they planned it. But all is wonderful by the end.
So, maybe a little lighthearted reading would be good for me.
By the end of the first two chapters, I was hooked. The first chapter has her writing a list of those people she would love to have as guests at a dinner party in Heaven. Be honest, you may have thought of a few in the past, and just the idea of it makes your imagination go wild. But then she is told that she needs to start the list over. Forget that dream list and look for those people who influenced your life.
Ouch! That changes the list dramatically. Then, she tells stories about people she met, people she worked for, people she worked with, and other influencers along the way. It was a treasure of a book to read, but, like her, my list changed with that one provision.
Really, my three Dads, if you will, would be on either list. My biological father provided for the family and taught me a few things about playing baseball. But then, my scoutmaster taught me a lot more about the outdoors, cooking skills, etc. and he did so while struggling with cerebral palsy (CP). When I went into the Army, I was an officer, a first lieutenant due to being in graduate school for three years. I had the rank, but I felt lost. I would have been lost if it were not for a Vietnam veteran who had a little drinking problem. My platoon sergeant took care of me until I was ready to leave the nest. And I could not have done it without his mentoring me, and we remained friends for the rest of his life, having overcome his problem.
But like Debbie Macomber, I might have various people on the guest list that barely crossed my path, but as they did so, it made a profound difference in my life.
Debbie Macomber’s book came out in 2010, but it is probably still available on an online bookstore. But just looking through your life can be done without the book. I do not need Albert Einstein and Blaise Pascal at my dinner party, but there might be a checkout person here or a pharmacist there or that bagging lady at the grocery store who smiles when I walk by, no matter how tough her day has been.
Who has influenced your life in the way God would wish for it to be influenced? After all, who else would God wish to be at our dinner party?
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley 
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