“While Zechariah was in the sanctuary, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the incense altar.”

We use the adage, “Back of the room” to many times discredit agreements and negotiations that can take place when everyone else is in the front of the room.  But, there is also another back of the room syndrome that can happen.  I was in a meeting setting recently and at one point I counted that 20% of the participants were either standing at the back of the room in various stages of attention, or not in the room at all but in the hallway talking.  There is probably some magic number of meeting participants that cause this to happen.  Or it might be at that moment when the speaker can’t know or see all the participants.  Or maybe when any presentation becomes one-way, you lose the audience.  I don’t know what the equation is, but any time you begin to see people start to get up and stand at the back of the room, then you are in danger of not having full-attention and the presentation time becomes wasted time.  It’s an expensive proposition to let this happen, not to mention that those who are paying attention are sitting there thinking, “Why am I engaged when others aren’t and no one is making them be so?”  And the worst offenders?  Usually the leadership team, who should be sitting in the front row versus in the back on their laptops, sending the message that their work is more important than what is being presented/talked about.  Consider next meeting keeping the front row full of those who everyone else will take their cues.

I love that Zechariah was serving in the Temple and in the sanctuary when the angel of the Lord stood next to him. It just reminds me that we have to show up and be in the room (figuratively) for when the Lord will reveal Himself to us.  Zechariah is one of the fortunate humans to have been exposed to an angel of the Lord.  God doesn’t ask us to find our way to the back of the room, to be lost in shadows and in other conversations.  He challenges us into the sanctuary where He can stand next to us.  My prayer for all of us is that we can stand courageously for Him in our workplaces!

Reference: Luke 1:11 (New Living Translation)