Advocate

The hottest travel amenity is getting your time back—because we all hate to wait!

In November 2024, Walt Disney World began piloting a new paid service that allows visitors to the Florida resort’s four theme parks to bypass regular lines for popular attractions. Vail Resorts introduced a gear membership program meant to let skiers skip rental lines. More hotels are charging for perks like early check-in.

About half of the more than 650 theme parks, zoos, aquariums, monuments and observation decks surveyed by the travel-research firm Arival offered skip-the-line or VIP access tickets in 2024. Of those not offering these options, 18% said they would introduce similar access in 2025.

The trend highlights how cost and comfort are becoming more intermingled for travelers, especially those hitting crowded destinations. And how those with tighter budgets risk ending up worse off.

These offers are often aimed at families. Rochelle Marcus, a stay-at-home mom in Oxford, N.C., says parents have extra incentive to pay up for a pass during school breaks, when crowds are larger. “That way everyone’s not tired, cranky, and grumpy at the end of the day,” she says. And as someone else in the article concluded: “Life is too short to be spent waiting in line all the time.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

You can approach this illustration from two angles: 1) Impatience; Waiting – This shows the negative side of human nature that is impatient and wants favorable status. This status is gained by payment. 2) Advocate; Invitation; Rights - The positive side is that we have an advocate who gifted us with priority access to the Father (Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:14-16). This status is all due to God’s grace. You cannot buy your way into access with God.

Bonnie Crawford was in danger of missing a connecting flight for a board meeting last week when a United Airlines customer-service rep saved the day. She got rebooked on a pricey nonstop flight in business class. For free.

You’re probably thinking, “No airline ever does that for me.” Crawford isn’t just any frequent flier. She has United’s invitation-only Global Services status.

It’s a semi-secret, status-on-steroids level that big spenders strive for every year. American and Delta have souped-up statuses, too, with similarly haughty names: ConciergeKey and Delta 360°. The airlines don’t like to talk about what it takes to snag an invite, how many people have such status, or even the perks. Even the high rollers themselves don’t know for sure.

Get into these exclusive clubs and you get customer service on speed dial, flight rebooking before you even know there’s trouble, lounge access, and priority for upgrades. Not to mention bragging rights and swag. People even post unboxing videos of their invites on YouTube.

Anyone with this super status needn’t fret about the value of airline loyalty or the devaluation of frequent-flier points.

Crawford was invited to Global Services for 2017 and was hooked. “It was the first taste of this magic, elusive, absolutely incredible status,’’ she says. She wasn’t invited again until this year and fears she won’t be invited back next year due to fewer costly international flights in her new job.

Possible Preaching Angles:

You can approach this illustration from two angles: 1) Boasting; Pride – This shows the negative side of human nature that loves to boast about their favored position and humble-brag about their status. This status is gained by merit. 2) Advocate; Grace; Invitation; Rights - The positive angle is that we have an Advocate who gifted us a special relationship with the Father (Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:14-16). This status is all due to God’s grace.

Shayden Walker didn’t know what was waiting for him on the other side of his neighbor’s doorbell. All he knew was he needed some help. "I was wanting to see if you knew any kids around 11 or 12 maybe,” said Shayden, in footage caught on the neighbor’s doorbell camera. “Cause I need some friends real bad," explaining that he’d been bullied at school.

As it turns out, his neighbors in the Ray family didn’t have any kids his age. But one of them had a TikTok account, where they posted the video of their encounter with Shayden. It went viral, being viewed over six million times.

Shayden’s mother, Krishna Patterson said, "He's been hospitalized because the bullying was so bad and he felt so isolated.” Shayden said, “What my life was like before ... kids were manipulating me and (said) they would be my friend. But when they ask me to do something horrible, I don't feel like they're actually my friend.”

The Rays also set up a GoFundMe account for the boy, where they raised over $40,000, exceeding any expectations they might have had for finding help. Because of such generosity, Shayden will get to purchase some new clothes, a video game system, and tickets to an amusement park.

And Shayden’s mom has advice for anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation to the Ray’s. “If you see it [bullying], just advocate for that person. Just be there for that person. Do not let that person suffer," said Patterson.

Shayden himself has a message for anyone else who might be considering bullying behavior. “How would you like it if someone were to bully you? How would that make you feel?"

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Lord loves to answer the call of the afflicted, and does not leave the righteous forsaken.

For NFL player James Smith-Williams, it started with a challenge. The Washington Commanders defensive end was a student at North Carolina State University when he heard a speaker named Brenda Tracy talk about her experience surviving sexual assault. James told reporters, “Her biggest takeaway was, ‘If you’re a good man, what are you doing to be a good man?’ That really stuck with me.”

Once he entered the NFL, Smith-Williams partnered with Tracy’s nonprofit to establish a network of players who raise money and awareness for nonprofits that support survivors of domestic abuse and sexual assault. Because October has been deemed as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, he has been supporting the Purple Leash Project. This initiative seeks to make domestic violence shelters more friendly for pets, because of their potential for emotional support.

According to Smith-Williams, only 15% of current shelters even allow pets. “About half of the people who are in domestic violence situations delay leaving because of their pet. Pets are family too. Ensuring that people who have pets and who are in these situations have a place to go, I just think that is so important.”

Smith-Williams recently helped build doghouses at a local shelter who received a Purple Leash Project grant. He also wore a pair of purple cleats during a game in support of the charity. “As long as I have the ability to help out, I definitely will.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Having an effective witness is more than just avoiding sinful or abusive behavior. It’s also taking action in helping to defend and assist people suffering abuse in order to demonstrate the love of God to people who hurting.

Software engineer Cher Scarlett is helping to shine a light on discrimination and sexual harassment at Apple, where she works. In an interview Scarlett said, “Apple does not care about its employees. It cares about money. Maybe that’s capitalism, and that’s just the way corporations are. But I can’t live my life further accepting it and not saying something about it.”

Scarlett is motivated to speak up because she knows what it feels like to be powerless; not long ago she herself was the one in need of advocacy. That’s because before she taught herself to code, Scarlett struggled with a pill addiction after surviving sexual abuse and dropping out of high school.

Scarlett teamed up with Apple Maps program manager Janneke Parrish to organize an initiative with the hashtag #AppleToo, encouraging employees to share their stories of workplace discrimination. Parrish says, “It is an incredible story. She’s a deeply inspiring figure.”

Scarlett has become accustomed to telling her story to her many followers on social media:

I’m not a corporate shill, but I’m also not throw-away-my-job idiotic. I have to feel good about what I’m putting into the world, whether that’s in my job or on social media, whatever. I have to feel good about it. And if I don’t, I have to remedy it immediately.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The gospel has the power to transform people from victimhood to victory. Not only that, but God allows us to go through trials, not just so that our faith is tested, but that once we have overcome, we can also help others going through similar trials

The skies were stormy as Father James Quinn, chaplain for the FBI’s Miami office, began to offer his public remarks. “Even the heavens are crying,” said Quinn, as he addressed the crowd of loved ones and coworkers gathered to remember FBI Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger. “She led a life of sheer determination, dedication and courage,” according to FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Laura Schwartzenberger was killed alongside Special Agent Daniel Alfin during a child pornography investigation. The agents were killed and four others were wounded after the man at the center of the investigation opened fire while they attempted to serve a search warrant at his residence.

Laura was known as a tireless advocate for children. As she spent seven years working crimes against children. According to Wray, she experienced “the very worst parts of humanity. It’s a job with high stress, high emotional toll, and high burnout. But Laura never stopped.”

She was also known as a tireless athlete who used her fitness for good. She had the distinction as being the only female member of the Albuquerque SWAT team in its history. Michelle Brown, the gym owner where Schwartzenberger was known for her 5am Cross-Fit workouts, called her “a true hero.”

Director Wray said that Laura’s presence was so deeply felt in her community that several parents of victims from previous investigations reached out to ask how they could help care for her family. He said, “They asked how they can help Laura’s two boys. And that speaks volumes about what Laura meant to this community.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

A life given in service is never wasted; on the contrary, we live up to the highest ideals of the gospel of Jesus when we work to right the scales of justice and protect society’s most vulnerable. In so doing, we are affirming the value of every human life as worth protecting.

Luke Winkie writes on Vox.com:

Jen Glantz is there for women on the biggest day of their lives—for about $2,000 a wedding. The 31-year-old entrepreneur has been a professional bridesmaid since 2015, working dozens of ceremonies each year around the country. She's a dear friend for a day, not a wedding planner. Glantz says, “I'm not going to be able to pick your flowers or taste your cake with you.” Instead, she specializes in energizing the dance floor, distracting problem relatives, and above all, comforting the bride. “You're running around putting fires out. You'll clock 30,000 steps in one wedding.” Some clients have suffered a recent falling-out with a bridesmaid and need a quick fill-in, while others just don't have enough close friends.

About three-quarters of the time, brides ask Glantz to make up a fake name and backstory—she usually claims to be a friend from some obscure hobby. Glantz launched her company, Bridesmaid for Hire, in 2015 after serving as a civilian bridesmaid in her 20s for numerous friends. “That got me thinking that if I could do this for friends, I could do it for the wedding industry.” She now has a team of pro bridesmaids but rejects any applicants who emphasize how much they love to party. Glantz says of the job, “It's not a party, it's an emotional roller coaster.”

When an envoy visited the White House to advocate for an inmate serving a life sentence, most of the headlines went toward fashion model and lifestyle icon Kim Kardashian West. However, accompanying her was former federal judge Kevin Sharp. Sharp carried an authoritative tone because of his years on the federal bench. But Sharp also had a specific opinion on the inmate in question because he was the one who sentenced him to prison.

Back in 2013, Christopher Young was sentenced to life in prison under a federal “three strikes” law, even though his drug charges were nonviolent. Sharp says Young should never have received such a harsh sentence, but that during the trial, his hands were tied because of the sentencing statutes.

Sharp vividly remembered that day in court, listening to Young give his formal statement:

If anyone is getting a mandatory sentence, you have to remember these are still people. You need to give them a chance to talk. It was the worst time I've ever had on the bench. I knew it was a mandatory life sentence. He knew it was a mandatory life sentence …

Sharp is notable for having left a lifetime judicial position to advocate for change:

Our criminal justice system is a mess. It's still the best there is, but there is so much we could do to make it better. And one of those things has got to be get rid of mandatory minimums. Let the judges do what you ask them to do. I got to the point where I'm thinking: “Is my role in society better on the bench or off the bench? Am I better off the bench working and advocating for a more fair criminal justice system?"

Possible Preaching Angle:

Those in authority have a responsibility to wield that authority justly. If we find we can make a difference for those without influence, we are obligated to do so. This will result in the honor and glory of Christ.

In her book Confronting Christianity, Rebecca McLaughlin writes:

Paul Offit, a professor of pediatrics and vaccinology at the University of Pennsylvania, had good reason to think religion hindered morality. In 1991, a measles epidemic had swept through Philadelphia. Hundreds of children got sick. Nine died. Offit was an attending physician at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. What differentiated these measles-stricken patients from other sick kids was how unnecessary their suffering was. Two Philadelphia churches, whose schools educated hundreds of children, had refused vaccination and medical care. Thus, the disease took hold and spread.

This incident was one among many that prompted Offit to write a book entitled Bad Faith: How Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine. Being nonreligious, he assumed he would “sound the same themes that have been sounded by militant atheists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris: that religion is illogical and potentially harmful.”

But as Offit read the Bible and explored the history of medicine, he changed his mind. Jesus' advocacy for children moved him to tears. He concluded:

Independent of whether you believe in the existence of God . . . you have to be impressed with the man described as Jesus of Nazareth. At the time of Jesus’ life, one historian said that child abuse was “the crying vice of the Roman Empire.” Infanticide was common. Abandonment was common. That's because children were property, no different than slaves. But Jesus stood up for children, cared about them, when those around him typically didn't.

Offit now calls Christianity “the single greatest breakthrough against child abuse” in history. He notes that the first Christian emperor of Rome outlawed infanticide in 315 and provided a nascent form of welfare in 321 so poor families would not have to sell their kids. Ultimately, Offit changed the subtitle of his book from How Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine to When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine, acknowledging the massive impact Christianity has had on medicine and ethics.

In the mid-1800s working as a seaman in Great Britain was a dangerous job. Shady ship owners tried to maximize profits by overloading their ships. These ships often sank in bad weather, allowing the ship owners to make an even greater profit on the over-insured ships. In the year 1873-74 around the coastline of the United Kingdom 411 ships sank and 506 people died. Overloading and poor repair made some ships so dangerous that they became known as “coffin ships.” Sailors refused to go board these “coffin ships” and were often imprisoned for desertion. Between 1870 and 1872 alone, 1,628 sailors were incarcerated for this "crime."

Then in 1868 a young British politician named Samuel Plimsoll applied his biblical faith to a current injustice. Plimsoll announced that he would “do all in his power to put an end to the unseaworthy ships owned by the greedy and the unscrupulous.” As a member of the House of Commons he tried to have a law passed, but ship-owning politicians and their ship-owner cronies rejected the law. Then a massive storm wrecked 23 ships, leaving 70 seaman and six rescuers dead. Onlookers clustered on the pier in despair as vessel after vessel foundered.

With the public’s new attention on the injustice of ship overloading, Plimsoll fought to promote the cause. He displayed sailors' grieving widows in public and distributing 600,000 copies of a book exposing the vile practices of the ship owners.

Finally, under his leadership, Parliament passed the 1875 Merchant Shipping Act which marked the beginning of the end for “coffin ships.” From then on, and to this day, vessels had to display the Plimsoll Mark, a loadline, painted clearly on their hulls, showing how deep they could safely sit in the water and prevent overloading. The new practice saved thousands of lives of seaman who were caught in an unjust situation.

The Discovery Channel aired "Selling Murder: The Killing Films of the Third Reich," a documentary on films found in archives after German reunification. The Nazis had a public relations problem: they wanted to exterminate weaker members of society, but Lutheran Germany had a history of compassion toward the old, infirm, and the mentally ill. In order to change public perception, the Nazis hired some of Germany's best filmmakers.

I watched the Nazi films with chilled fascination. Certain qualities—the narrator's "objective scientist" voice, the soothing, classical soundtrack, the follow-the-dot reasoning—reminded me of a fifth-grade science film. A hunter strides through the Black Forest. "Nature runs by fixed laws," says the narrator. "The fox catches the weak rabbit, and the hunter shoots the weak deer."

Any realities that challenged the film's message—Don't hunters go after strong deer with big racks?—were glossed over. This was Nazi propaganda, not pure science. Next the film showed patients at Hadamar, a facility for the mentally disturbed. Klieg lights aimed at unnatural angles made the patients look ominous, their faces angular and deeply shadowed, their eyes wild.

Shift to a bureaucrat displaying budget graphs. It takes 100,000 Deutschmarks to keep one of these defectives alive, he explains—money badly needed by the Fatherland. We should follow the example of nature and allow the weak to die….

"Selling Murder" ended with a surprising twist. Despite their slick films and other attempts to sway public opinion, the Nazis failed to exterminate the physically and mentally disabled. Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals they murdered virtually without protest; the disabled, they had to let live.

Why? The change in Nazi policy traces back to one brave woman, a Christian nurse who worked at Hadamar. When the facility was converted into a gas chamber, she could not keep silent. She documented the facts and reported them to her bishop, who released them to the public. The resulting outcry from the church forced the Nazis to back down. Perhaps her courage can serve as a prophetic model for Christians today.

One of the most moving passages in English literature comes towards the end of Charles Dickens's Tale of Two Cities, a story of the French revolution. Each day, a grim procession of prisoners made its way on the streets of Paris to the guillotine. One prisoner, Sidney Carton, a brave man who had once lost his soul but had now found it again, was now giving his life for his friend. Beside him there was a young girl. They had met before in the prison, and the girl had noticed the man's gentleness and courage. She said to him, "If I may ride with you, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage."

So they rode together, her hand in his; and when they reached the place of execution, there was no fear in her eyes. She looked up into the quiet composed face of her companion, and said, "I think you were sent to me by heaven."

In all the dark valleys of life, God our Father, the God of all comfort, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, is at our side.

First, they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.