The Game of Life
06.10.05
Graduation Day: Enjoy the Journey
This evotional begins a new series titled The Game of Life.
In 1959, the Milton Bradley Company commemorated its hundredth anniversary by introducing a “modern” board game: The Game of Life. The game featured a road from high school to retirement with lots of detours, dead-ends, and shortcuts. Advertising copy for the game advised players this way: “Land a great job, get married, and fill up your car with kids! Dodge bad luck and make a buck. End up with the biggest fortune, and you’ll retire in style as a winner!”
If only the real game of life was that simple! Unfortunately, the game of life is a little more complicated than the Game of Life. Life doesn’t fit into nice neat game board boxes. And the path is sequentially laid out.
Have you ever tried playing a board game without reading the rules? Our family does that all the time. We aren’t patient enough to actually learn the game before we start playing so we usually end up making up rules as we go along or we hit a point in the game where we’ve got to go back and read the rules anyways and we discover we’ve been playing the game the wrong way. For what it’s worth, we usually quit and start over again!
A lot of people approach life that way. They are playing the game of life, but they’ve never read the instruction manual. They don’t know the rules of the game. They aren’t even sure of the objective. Over the next seven weeks we’ll explore “seven rules” for life:
Graduation Day: Enjoy the Journey
Tour Europe: Get Out of the Boat
Night School: Keep Asking Questions
Win Marathon: Set God-sized Goals
Start a Career: Pursue Your Passions
Get Married: Fall in Love
Pay Day: Pay it Forward
Driven
Exodus 13:17 has always been one of my favorite passages of Scripture. It is doubly meaningful to me because I preached on this passage in my commencement address the day I graduated from college. It says, “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For God said, ‘If the face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.’ So God led the people around by the desert road toward the Red Sea.”
I have a simple goal anytime I drive anyplace on a trip: I want to get there in record time. It’s that simple.
We have this panel on our mini-van that serves as a “deluxe odometer.” The second we leave on a trip I reset the odometer and the elapsed time. Throughout the trip I’m always toggling between the two. My goal is to beat one mile per minute.
Every other week I drive from our Union Station location to our Ballston location. I’ve made the 9.6 mile drive in ten minutes. I have a dream. I want to beat the ten minute barrier!
All of that is to say this: I tend to live the way I drive. I want to get from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time possible. The problem with that is this: sometimes I fail to enjoy the journey. I think we’re overly concerned with getting where God wants us to go and under concerned about becoming who God wants us to be in the process.
After I graduated from college, I interviewed for ministerial credentials and I’ll never forget that interview. I thought they’d ask me theological questions. And they did. But one question was pretty profound. It just cut to the chase. One of the interviewers said, “If you had to define yourself in one word, what would it be?” Without a moment’s hesitation I said “driven.” To be perfectly honest, I was pretty proud of my answer then. But I’m not so sure now. As a driven person, I want to get where I want to go as quickly as possible. That’s why Exodus 13:17 challenges me. God didn’t lead the Israelites down a short-cut. He took them on the scenic route. Evidently, his goal wasn’t to get them to their destination as quickly as possible. He wanted to make sure they became who they needed to be before they got where they needed to go. That is precisely how God works in our lives. He is far less concerned with where we’re going than who we’re becoming.
Most of us tend to focus on getting to our destination. But God is process-oriented. He won’t get us where He wants us to go before we’re ready to get there. Oswald Chamber said it better than I can. He said, “The question of getting to a particular end is a mere incident. What we call the process, God calls the end.”
Exit the Freeway
In their book, Finding the Open Road, the founders of Roadtrip Nation talk about their RV journey crisscrossing the United States interviewing all kinds of different people. In one of the chapters they talk about exiting the freeway. They were driving through western Montana and they decided to exit I-90 and check out the Clark Fork River. When they got to the river they ran into a trucker and they were somewhat surprised to see him skipping stones. Truckers are notorious for getting as far as they can as fast as they can. That’s how they make a living. They asked him what he was doing and he told them that his wife passed away from cancer the day before and he realized how impermanent life is. He said, “For thirty-five years I’ve driven by this exit a million times, and I’ve never stopped.” They said the look on his face was part regret and part enlightenment.
I think I was so busy getting where I wanted to go during my twenties that I didn’t enjoy the journey as much as I could have and should have. Too many of us suffer from destination disease. We’re so focused on tomorrow that we fail to enjoy today. When we’re in high school we can’t wait for college. When we’re in college we can’t wait to graduate. When we’re single we can’t wait to get married. We can’t wait for kids. We can’t wait to climb the corporate ladder. We can’t wait to make money. We can’t wait for retirement. And when we finally retire we wish we were young again!
The Mirage
When I first started pastoring, I dreamed of a church that was impacting thousands of people, but there was a big gap between my dream and my reality. Our first year we averaged about twenty-five people in attendance and I remember coming to a point where I had to make a conscious decision. I realized that I could be unhappy until the church reached some “arbitrary” number at some “indefinite” time in the future. Or I could to love pastoring a church of 25 people. And I decided that I was going to enjoy every phase we go through as a church. I was going to be the best pastor of 25 and 100 and 500 and 750 people that I could be! And Lord willing, I’d be the best pastor of 1,000 and 5,000 and 10,000 people that I could be. I made a choice to enjoy every stage!
Some of you are stressed out because you’re “here” when you want to be “there.” You are in the “present” when you want to be in the “future.” Maybe “here” is working as a congressional staffer and “there” is being an elected member of Congress. Maybe “here” is working in sales and “there” is starting your own company. Maybe “here” is waiting tables and “there” is owning your own restaurant. I don’t doubt that some of those dreams will become reality, but if you don’t learn to love life now you won’t love life then.
Take Off Your Sandals
In Exodus 3:5 God says to Moses, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” We’ve heard the story so many times that the most obvious lesson is overlooked: the “holy ground” wasn’t the Promised Land. The “holy ground” was right where Moses was standing! This is holy ground. This is a holy moment. God wants us to experience Him right here right now. It’s about celebrating wherever and whenever we are! Don’t wait to worship God till you get to the Promise Land. Worship him along the way. Don’t wait to celebrate until you get to the Promise Land. Celebrate right here right now.
Let me tell what I think our greatest sin is. I don’t think our greatest sin is not feeling bad enough about the things we do wrong. I think our greatest sin is not feeling good enough about the things God does right.
Nearly 100,000 people around the world put their faith in Christ every day! With that in mind, consider Luke 15:10: “There is rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents.” Every time someone puts their faith in Christ it sets off a cosmic celebration of angelic proportions! And the celebration never stops! There is literally a celebration every second. We’re called to mirror on earth what is happening in heaven.
Take the Scenic Route
Let me make an observation: most God encounters happen off the beaten path. The burning bush was in the middle of nowhere. It says that Moses led his flock “to the far side of the wilderness.” He wasn’t just in the wilderness. He was on the “far side” of the wilderness. I am more and more convinced that spirituality and geography aren’t mutually exclusive. I have a formula: change of place + change of pace = change of perspective. If you want to change your perspective you’ve got to change places or change paces.
In his book, Anam Cara, John O’ Donohue tells a story about an African explorer who hired some native Africans to help carry his equipment through the jungle and they didn’t stop for three days. At the end of the third day these hired hands stopped and absolutely refused to move on. The explorer asked why and one of the African natives said, “We have moved to quickly to reach here; now we need to wait to give our spirits a chance to catch up with us.” Most of us could say the same thing. We’ve moved too quickly to get where we’re at and we need to give our spirits a chance to catch up. Psalm 46 says, “Be still and know that I am God.”
I see a principle in Scripture that is true geographically and spiritually: the greatest discoveries are often made the farthest away from home. The Queen of Sheba traveled across a continent to visit King Solomon. The Ethiopian Eunuch was on an inter-continental pilgrimage to Jerusalem. The Wise Men followed yonder star and discovered the Messiah.
One of the highlights on our recent mission trip to Ethiopia was getting off the beaten path. It was a true “off road” experience. We drove in land rovers about ninety minutes over the bumpiest roads I’ve ever experienced. Some of the roads were dirt. Some of them were rocks. It’s amazing we didn’t get any flat tires. We drove and we drove and we drove. We eventually came into a clearing where we could see a volcano. And that volcano heated some natural springs that we went swimming in. I’ve never seen more translucent water. It was like the Garden of Eden.
We got back in our land rovers and we kept driving into the middle of nowhere and we actually went to visit a tribal village. It was right out of the pages of National Geographic. This nomadic tribe is living the way they’ve lived for hundreds or thousands of years. It was like traveling back in time.
All of that is to say this. We had to go about ninety minutes off road to swim in the hot springs and see the Afar tribe. We would have never discovered or experienced those things if we had stayed on the beaten path.
In the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” If you follow in Jesus’ footsteps they’ll take you off the beaten path.
Mapquest
Call me crazy, but some of the most enlightening and inspiring parts of the Bible are in the appendix. Turn to the back of your Bible and look at the maps. Look at Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Look at Jesus’ ministry. Look at Paul’s missionary journey. Here’s what you’ll find: lots of zigzagging. There isn’t a “straight line” to be found. They were literally “all over the map.” Moses didn’t have a Rand McNally map. Jesus didn’t consult AAA. Paul didn’t Mapquest his missionary journeys. The journey to the promise land involved lots of wandering. Jesus’ ministry was full of twists and turns. Paul went in circles.
I look back over my life and I have one observation to make: I had no idea when I graduated from college that I’d be where I am doing what I’m doing. My map looks an awful lot like the Israel’s exodus, Jesus’ ministry, and Paul’s missionary journeys. But God is awfully good at getting us where He wants us to go. So we need to focus less on getting where we need to go-that’s God’s job. And we need to focus more on becoming who God wants us to be. And we need to enjoy the journey!
And we need to claim the promise in Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord will all your heart and lean not unto your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and He will make your paths straight.”
