PLAYING POKER in LIFE
But how does "adventure" in the Lord Jesus show itself? Is it all missionary work in the wild parts of the planet? Is it laying one's life on the line in some forbidding area of the world or living in poverty with the homeless in some chaotic urban location? Sometimes this is the description of adventure in the kingdom of God.
There are men and women, girls and boys who ford raging rivers, climb mountains, trek their way through forests and live for months or years in strange circumstances with people whose language and customs they don't understand and have to learn. There are young people out there, far from home, digging wells and building shelters for the homeless and helpless and those in need of clean water that's free of merciless parasites—and they do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus. There are those who die after decades of teaching, far from home and with nothing but the clothes on their backs, a couple of Bibles [their own and one in a foreign language] and a beat-up writing pad, attended by a mere handful of converts.
But it cannot be that everyone in the Lord Jesus is called to such a life of adventure and devotion. Millions come to God in Christ with the paths of their lives pretty well fixed, married with children perhaps or with precarious health or gifted as students and teachers, or people gifted in business or economic ways, men and women who can make money, employ people, support lovely ventures or people gifted as administrators, builders, architects, construction workers, scientists, government officials, teachers, medical experts and such. All of them gifted by God and expected to express their devotion to him in any of these ways. None of these may carry Bibles or the storied truth to hard-to-get-to parts of the earth but every one of them lay what they can do at the feet of the Lord Jesus. That too is engaging in the adventure
Whatever their gifts, they're all used out of the same spirit and with the same heart—it's all kingdom work! Parents parenting, children respecting and loving, friends truly befriending, lovers—young and old—loving in honor. What they have in the various and often changing stages of their lives they give to God. They all share the same vision and all give what they have to give to and for God and his creative and redemptive purpose.
There’s a notion abroad among Christians—it’s as popular as it is false—that God’s various non-miraculous gifts are given to Christians only when they become Christians. We seem to forget that God gives these gifts to non-Christians also. The capacity for love, for love of music, love of numbers [as in mathematics], love of literature and words, the creative arts like painting, photography and sculpture. Keep the list going; you know exactly what I mean.
The idea that Christians are bereft of God’s good gifts of administration, rational thinking, practical thinking and such before they become Christians is silly. God doesn’t gift people with these by magic! You want magic? Go to the movies. Non-Christians are as gifted in these areas as Christians; such gifts are given by God to the human family and he hands them out in the “natural” way—DNA, neurons and everything else that comes together to make up a healthy human.
Such gifts can be suppressed or they can be refined and augmented; they can be used to honor God and bless his human family or they can be used for sheer self-service and self-glorification. Whether we use them for self-service or not God can achieve much of his own purpose through their use and whether or not we use them in a selfish way it doesn’t alter the truth that God has gifted us with them that all may benefit and be benefited in his name.
The Christian would probably say—should say, I think—that God is center, life is a challenge, the challenge sounds out in the middle of a world of human weakness and alienation [the biblical Fall should enter here] and the challenge differs in form and intensity for each person, each family or people depending on their circumstances and environment.
[Take a long look at Genesis 8:21 as a general description of humans and yet note in 9:1-11 what God expects of humans and how grandly he thinks of them! Weak or not, sinful or not, when it comes to humans God is "all in".]
With the card game Poker as a very limited metaphor, Christians just have to play the hand they've got, don't you think? Sometimes the game seems stacked against you and you’re sure you can't “win”. The good news is that "winning" means no more than playing out the hand you have. It doesn't mean you have to beat “the other guy”. If they have a better hand, then they have to play it well. "Winning" is to be faithful to the hand you've got. When you rise from the table the "owner" greets you with a smile and blesses you for a job well done. It's an "all in" move that gets his pleasure.
Right now so many are shoving their chips across the table in an act of trust and saying, "All in." No turning back, no sulking away from the table, no refusing to have anything to do with the game unless they get a great hand, like four aces or a royal flush.
When I was a kid I'd hang around "the toss" where the men would gamble on Friday night ["pay night"]. One guy I'll never forget was called "Blackout" [a nickname—never knew his real name]. He'd turn up, watch for a while and then start betting for or against heads or tails. It didn't matter which. He'd cover everyone's bet until his own money was "all in". Up would go the coins, down they'd come and he'd know where he stood. I saw him clean up more than once. He’d gather up all his winnings [now doubled], button his jacket and leave. I also saw him cleaned out. One toss and his entire pay packet was wiped out. He'd stand for a moment looking thoughtful, then button his coat and walk off without a word. No looking pitiful, no pleading for a handout—nothing like that. Just buttoned his coat and walked away—broke.
I'm going to take it he was married and so I know his family must have carried the burden when he walked in “skinned”—I'm not approving of his risking his pay and making it tough on his family when he lost but I always admired him and thought about him and thought it must be great to be able to live like that.
If somehow I'd got hold of a few pennies or maybe a shilling [a quarter] and lost it, I'd go around with the sad look hoping someone would take pity on me and give me, maybe, tuppence, for another start. Not him! When I thought about him—as I did at least once every Friday when I squeezed my way through the crowd of men to get to a place where I could look at Blackout—I didn’t think of the wrong of the situation; I thought only of what struck me as his heroic way—all in!—and how he gallantly took the rough with the smooth. I wanted to be like him! He reminded me of a couple of lines from Kipling’s poem: IF
If you can make a heap of all your winnings
And risk them at one turn of pitch and toss and lose
And start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss…
Let me drop the metaphor but not the willingness to risk everything involved in the manner of Blackout and people like him [yes, yes, I do recognize other aspects of the situation] and say that I greatly admire those who say yes to God and “play the game” and rejoice in the sense of adventure.
Parents and children, young lovers and friends, accomplished artists, business people, men and women of wealth, power and integrity, ditch-diggers and salespersons, homemakers and nurses, single mothers and fathers, preachers and teachers—gallant people in various parts of the world living out the “ordinary” or the “usual” but living it out with that all in spirit, pleased when things go their way but buttoning their coats and heading on home if the wished-for doesn't come their way.
Here’s to all you who in God’s name embrace the adventure in the circumstances in which you find yourself! Carrying the pain and the worry and the disappointment and seeing them as elements in the adventure in a chaotic world. You, who carry your own limitations, well aware of them, frustrated by them, wishing they were gone but refusing to walk away from "the game". God bless you, God bless you, God bless you.
Can you imagine a fish that looks like a horse—but swims like a submarine? God apparently did—and then created the “stallion of the sea”—the superb sea horse. These peculiar “horses,” however, do not gallop gracefully through a flowering valley, drink from a long wooden trough, or journey across the dusty, remote trails under a magnificent, vibrant sunset. Rather, these horses stylishly swim within the kelp-filled meadows of the sea.
The Outback of Australia is home to this magnificent bird. The hot temperatures and dry climate do not deter the mallee, though. During its mating season, the male creates for its partner’s eggs a nest that has an average circumference of 70 feet, and is over three feet in height. In the 1700s, the first white settlers came upon the mallee fowl’s nests and, due to the unbelievable size of these sandy dunes, at first believed that they were aborigine burial grounds (Junor, 1998).
But building a nest is only half the battle. The other half involves temperature maintenance in the mound. This job, once again, is left to the male mallee. Several times a day, the male inserts his beak into the pile of debris and sand. He proceeds to stick out his tongue, which is such a good thermometer that it can measure a temperature change as small as 1/10 of a degree! After assessing the temperature, the male can act accordingly. If the nest is too hot, he removes some of the sand covering the nest. If the nest is too cold, the male adds sticks to produce more heat, and sand to insulate the mound from the surroundings. The temperature must be kept at exactly 33 degrees Celsius, and must be maintained to within one degree in order for the unborn chicks to survive while still in the nest.