50. Who's the Greatest?

The disciples were special men because Jesus chose them to follow him and study his teachings. But they still had faults just like any other men. They got into an argument on the way to preach in another town.

Jesus knew what was on their minds, but he asked them what they were talking about anyway. No one answered him.

"I know that you were thinking about which one of you is the greatest disciple," he said. "Let me tell you something. If any one of you wants to be the first, you must be willing to be the last. Only the one who serves others before himself will be thought of as great."

Jesus lifted up a child from the crowd. He held the child in his arms as he spoke.

"Whoever welcomes a child of God (that's one of his disciples) into his home and heart welcomes me, too," Jesus told them. "If you welcome me into your life, you welcome my father, also."

Jesus told his disciples another story to explain how people who seemed to be last would come first in God's eyes.

"A man who owned a big house and a farm hired some workers for the day," Jesus said. "He soon found some men willing to work at his vineyard for one penny a day."

"Later, he found more men who wanted to work. Just before the day was through, he saw other men standing around and asked them why they were not working. "No one has hired us," they said. So the man told them to go back to his vineyard and work with the others."

"When the men came to be paid at the day's end, the man gave them all the same amount of money. Some of the men were very unhappy because they had worked many hours for their pay, while the others hadn't worked long at all. The man said that he had been fair to them all because each man had agreed to work for the pay."

"That is the way it is in the kingdom of heaven," Jesus said. "Those who come first will be last and the last ones will be treated as if they were the first."

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