Fear

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.

“What happens to a dream deferred?” That opening line from Harlem renaissance poet Langston Hughes has resonated with generations of African Americans over many decades because of the legacy of racism in America, and its soul-crushing propensity to dangle the specter of opportunity while keeping it perpetually out of reach.

Ed Dwight knew this reality firsthand. In 1962, Dwight was the first black man to be selected for an American astronaut training program. He spent years preparing, training, and running experiments at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Nevertheless, because of internal resistance to his inclusion into the program, Dwight was never selected for a NASA mission.

“Just like every other Black kid, you don’t get something, and you convince yourself it wasn’t that important anyway,” said Charles Bolden Jr., one of Dwight’s friends and a former NASA administrator.

After his military career concluded, Dwight eventually put it all behind him. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Denver and eventually became an accomplished artist, with 129 memorial sculptures and over 18,000 pieces in gallery exhibits across the United States.

So, when he was invited to participate in a commercial space flight earlier this year, Dwight initially demurred. “I’m a really busy guy,” said Dwight. “It didn’t make a lot of difference to me at the time.”

But a group of current and former black astronauts intervened, and reminded him of the years he spent training to fill a role he was never allowed to consummate. Because of them, Dwight changed his mind.

And by the time Dwight achieved spaceflight on the Blue Origin vessel, he broke another historic barrier. At 90 years old, Ed Dwight became the oldest person to fly in space, surpassing the previous record holder, former Star Trek star William Shatner.

One of the men who convinced Dwight to take the flight was Victor Glover, Jr. “While he was off the planet, I was weeping. It was tears of joy and resolution,” said Glover. He’d met Dwight in 2007, after receiving one of Dwight’s sculptures at an award presentation. Only later did Glover learn Dwight’s own personal history of unfulfilled longing within NASA.

“I was in the presence of greatness and didn’t even know it,” Glover said. “Sixty years he sat with this and navigated it with dignity and grace and class, and that is impactful to me.”

Blue Origin honored Dwight by naming his seat on the mission after his NASA call sign: Justice.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God does not forget about the sacrifices that his servants make in the process of living faithfully. Do not lose heart, for God is in the business of making wrong things right again.

According Deadspin’s sports columnist, Stephen Knox, NBA legend LeBron James may have achieved athletic feats that ordinary men can only dream of, but in one important way he’s just like many other men his age: he’s still an overprotective dad.

LeBron is the father of LeBron “Bronny” James, Jr. A point guard for the University of Southern California Trojans, Bronny has been widely considered a highly touted college basketball prospect for most of his collegiate athletic career. But it’s been unclear how much his visibility is due to hard work, talent due to genetic advantages, or simple nepotism.

This is why James caught some heat online after he responded defensively to the news that the prognosticators of the 2024 ESPN Mock NBA Draft left Bronny off their list, implying that he might need one more year of college basketball before his skill level will make him NBA-ready.

“Can y’all just let a kid be a kid and enjoy college basketball,” LeBron wrote on a recent social media post. “The work and results will ultimately do the talking no matter what he decides to do.”

Critics and skeptics piled on by rightly pointing out that LeBron helped to create the hype that he is now decrying by publicly stating a desire to play with his son in the NBA. Nevertheless, it seems as though Knox is willing to give LeBron the benefit of the doubt regarding his motivations. Knox concluded, “Even an American sports icon can get carried away with parental pride.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Our Heavenly Father loves us fully and unconditionally; no matter the pressure others put on us or we put on ourselves, God requires us only to faithfully live our calling and trust the outcome into his care.

Beauty has its privileges. Studies reliably show that the most physically attractive among us tend to get more attention from parents, better grades in school, more money at work, and more satisfaction from life. A study published in the Journal of Economics and Business found that good-looking banking CEOs take in over $1 million more in total compensation, on average, than their lesser-looking peers. “Good looks pay off,” the authors write.

New research from Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance similarly finds that comely managers of mutual funds lure more investments and enjoy more promotions than their counterparts, even though their funds don’t perform as well. The researchers suggest this performance gap may be because handsome managers approach risk with arrogant levels of confidence.

Scientists attribute the human tendency to give attractive people better treatment to something called the halo effect. Basically, we tend to assume that good looks are a sign of intelligence, trustworthiness, and good character and that ugliness is similarly more than skin deep. This may help explain why attractive people are less likely to be arrested or convicted, even after controlling for criminal involvement, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The gospel works by grace not by beauty—God saves us in Christ not because we are beautiful and worthy. He saves us despite our lack of spiritual and moral beauty. But he saves us to make us truly beautiful in him.

The Supreme Court recently outlawed most racial preferences in college admissions. However, a new study from Ivy League researchers indicates another form of affirmative action that tends to dominate exclusive institutions of higher learning: preference for wealth.

The Harvard study involved the eight Ivy League schools, plus four other highly-selective schools. For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, the data show that children from families in the top one percent of income ranking were 34 percent more likely to be admitted into these schools than the average applicant. Those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to be accepted.

Study researchers said, “The conclusion from this study is the Ivy League doesn’t have low-income students because it doesn’t want low-income students. ... Are these highly selective private colleges in America taking kids from very high-income, influential families and basically channeling them to remain at the top in the next generation?”

The study indicates that legacy admissions, or students given preferences because of alumni parents, is a large driver of outcomes that prioritize the wealthy over other similarly deserving students. So, too, are admission slots for certain sports like rowing, fencing, lacrosse, or equestrian, that tend to be populated by the wealthy because of high participation costs and upper-class cultural values.

The one notable exception is M.I.T., which is known for not offering admissions preferences to either legacy applicants or athletes. Stuart Schmill, dean of admissions at M.I.T. said, “I think the most important thing here is talent is distributed equally but opportunity is not. Our admissions process is designed to account for the different opportunities students have based on their income. It’s really incumbent upon our process to tease out the difference between talent and privilege.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

If God doesn't treat the rich or poor or different racial groups favorably, then we shouldn't either.

In a YouTube video, political commentor Konstantin Kisin reported:

They did an experiment with a group of women and they put scars on their faces. They told these women that they were going into a job interview and that the purpose of the experiment is to find out whether people with facial disfigurements encounter discrimination. They showed the women the scars in the mirror and the women saw themselves with the scars.

Then as they led them out of the room, they said, “We are just going to touch it up a little bit.” As they touched it up, they removed the scarring completely. So, the women went into the job interview thinking that they are scarred, but actually were their normal selves.

The result of the experiment is that those women came back reporting a massively increased level of discrimination. Indeed, many of them came back with comments that the interviewer had made that they felt were referencing their facial disfigurement.

This is why this ideology of victimhood is so dangerous. Because if you preach to people constantly that we’re all oppressed, then that primes people to look for that.

You can view this 60 second video here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible does recognize the reality of innocent victims, but it stops short of affirming a victim mentality. While the Bible promises that we will experience innocent suffering for the cause of Christ, it nowhere speaks of our being “victims” in the contemporary sense of the word. Rather, the Bible speaks of us as “victors.” You can overcome victim mentality through a relationship with Christ and the Word of God. Christ (1 Pet. 2:22-23), Paul (Phil. 1:12-14), and Joseph (Gen 50:19-21) all show us an example of someone who was victimized but overcame a victim mentality.

Months after winning a national title, Harvard's debate team faced their toughest opponent yet—a group of prison inmates from New York. An article in the British newspaper The Guardian reported: "The showdown took place at the Eastern correctional facility in New York, a maximum-security prison where convicts can take courses taught by faculty from nearby Bard College, and where inmates have formed a popular debate club.

Eastern invited the Ivy League undergraduates and this year's national debate champions over for a friendly competition. A three-judge panel concluded that the Bard team had raised strong arguments that the Harvard team had failed to consider and declared the team of inmates victorious." The Harvard team posted a note on their Facebook page graciously congratulating the inmates.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The prison team certainly isn't a stand-in for the church, but you have to love the way that God chooses the "foolish things" of this world to shame the wise. This story also shows why showing partiality () may lead to some wrong conclusions about who is up and who is down.