What shall I compare the kingdom of heaven to? It is like children’s church, when Teacher Vanessa says, “Who wants to help set up? If you help, I’ll give you two slices of pizza!”

And so the kids show up to volunteer. As Teacher Vanessa walks around the building, she sees kids just sitting in the lobby bored, because they don’t have their parents’ iPads. So Teacher Vanessa says, “Come help and I’ll give you pizza!” So they get excited and rush to help!

As the day is almost over, and all the kids have been working hard, she finds more sad and bored kids and invites them to come help. This last group only helped for like ten minutes by making drawings to hang in the room.

Once they finished with everything, the pizzas arrives! She starts serving pizza to the kids who got there last and she gives them two slices each. The kids who were there from the beginning said, “Wow, if they got two slices, I bet we’re going to get a whole pizza to ourselves!”

And so when it was their turn to get a plate, Teacher Vanessa gives them two pizza slices as well. The kids get angry and they said, “What?! We have been here all day doing all the hard stuff and they only made drawings! How come we don’t get more pizza than them?!”

Teacher Vanessa replied, “First of all, watch your tone young one. When you volunteered, I said I was going to give you two slices and you agreed. So I am giving you what you agreed to. Don’t be mad because I gave the other kids two slices as well. These are my pizzas; I can give them out however I want. Are you saying I shouldn’t be nice and share my pizzas?” The kids were listening, quietly.

Teacher Vanessa continued, “I chose to be generous to the kids who didn’t know they could volunteer and get pizza. They were bored. If you were bored and hungry, wouldn’t you have wanted the same?”

And so the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

A parable written by a friend of Elisha’s Riddle – Christian Sullivan