i like board games...a lot...and when i say a lot, i mean a whole lot! and i guess i should clarify. when i say board games, i am really not talking about Gestures or Sorry or games like that. (although those games are not all bad)
what i really love are the longer, thinking, strategic games. the ones where you have to plan an approach, and then maybe change the approach 2 or 3 times during the course of the game.
i am realizing that these games have a great lesson to teach me about life (they probably have numerous lessons if i dug deep enough). but here is the lesson i have been learning.
i am realizing that my enjoyment of these games has little to do with whether i win or lose, and much to do with the process and journey of arriving at the end of the game. i love the thinking, the analyzing, the reacting, the reworking the plan and initiating the new plan. there must be a point to the game, or else the process makes no sense. there has to be a winner. or why would we even sit down to play. but i am realizing that i am less and less interested in playing games to be the winner and more and more interested in playing them to enjoy the journey.
and it is the same way in the life that God has put in front of us. often we make it so much about the end...about where we are going...about heaven and hell. and there is an end...there is a heaven and a hell...and they matter. but in many senses they are not the point right now. they are what give context to the now...but they are not the point now. the journey is the point now. the enjoyment is in the journey. the calling is in the journey. we are not here to just wait for an end to come. we are here to participate in the process. we are here to participate in the thinking, the analyzing, the reacting, the reworking the plan and initiating the new plan.
1 comment:
We did a Sunday School lesson series once called, "When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back In the Box." The premise was that at the end of every board game, everyone ends up at the same position (winners don't get to keep their monopoly bucks, and losers don't have to enter bankruptcy). The rich don't get to keep their wealth, the best business people don't get to keep their resume, the powerful don't get to keep their position. We all end up with the same binary choice, so what really matters is not that we become the "master of the board," but rather that we diligently use the means provided to us by God to glorify Him, not to win ourselves (this probably isn't what Charlie Sheen had in mind).
Thanks for your post - keep it up!
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