Consequences

It's interesting because I'm not very good at chess.

I love the game, but I prefer playing it fast. I don't think much about my moves, and I like to challenge the other player to do the same. "Just play," I tell them. My few memorable moments include when Chris would beat me mercilessly on the chess set I bought with grandma's Christmas money; or the time James almost beat Matt in 4 moves. I love watching people play on the streets, especially when they have a timer. I'll never forget the guy who stood up from his chair, knowing he had lost, even though it was several moves away.

What makes that game best is when you can see ahead of the next move.

"It's twelve moves away, but it's there. You've got him."

I think of these characters in the show Lost and I think about the different moves that brought them to the island. Beyond that, their life experiences cause them to make the decisions they do. Most of them are ridden with guilt, even more of them have trust issues. They interact with each other (and the "Others") in pretty foolish ways.

There are times we ask God for things because we think it's a great next move, but we haven't looked much beyond that. In many cases, if God were to give us what we ask, someone else gets hurt. Tolstoy wrote a short story about a woman who was angry because God took away her child. She was immediately given a glimpse of what his life would have been like, and she realizes that the world was saved by his death. That he was saved too, by getting to die in his innocence.

I thank God that He doesn't listen to me very often when it comes to the things I want. Nonetheless, it is still difficult to discern what I'm supposed to ask for. What exactly is my life supposed to look like, then?

Maybe that's what Sarah was thinking when she offered Hagar to her husband.

It's scary to think of the consequences, when everything is said and done. To look back and see, "Oh, that's what brought me here."

I play chess rather quickly, but I hate living life that way. If I don't stop to think what I've done, or what I'm doing, I might turn into something ugly and/or foolish. Perhaps having begun Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis also makes me think this way. I don't want to be so far gone that there is no hope in turning back.

On the one hand, I think God's grace is bigger than that and that there is always hope. But on the other, it's so hard to watch, metaphorically speaking, dogs returning to their own vomit. To know that I too, am just one or two decisions away from destroying myself. Praise God for being ever-present. I pray I keep listening, keep wanting to listen. Oh to have the patience to see the twelve moves played out!