I learned to play chess when I was young. I actually taught myself from a Bobby Fischer book, but because I taught myself, I never really got the actual playing concepts of the game. I knew how the pieces were supposed to move, but knowing how the pieces are supposed to move is an important but small part of the game. Without a partner, it was going to be difficult for me to apply the rest of the book’s knowledge to my game. So I stayed in that stunted understanding until recently.
This year Liz and I watched a show were the protagonist was a chess prodigy. It got me interested again in chess. I searched the apps that were available to my phone and found one that would teach me the skills that I never learned when I was younger. Not only does the app teach me some of the concepts of the game, it actually sets me up with an AI partner to play with.
Because of this, I’ve grown pretty significantly in my chess game. That doesn’t mean that I’m really any good. It just means that I’m better than I was. It means I can routinely beat the “absolute beginner” level, but that I still don’t have the maturity to go beyond that. Bump me up anywhere close to “Intermediate” and I’m going to get creamed. Still, there’s hope – hope that one day I’ll be able to move out of “beginner” a hold my own.
Sometimes I feel like my chess game matches my Christianity. Sure, I may know the moves, but am I very good? Well, not really. Not yet anyway. But there is hope. The hope is similar in some ways. I hope that as I continue to “play the game” with other people, reading Scripture together and applying it to our lives, that I will get to be a slightly more intermediate Christian. But that’s where the similarity stops.
If I really devoted my life to becoming a “Grand Master” chess player for the rest of my life, I could maybe get….closer. But I certainly couldn’t make it to Bobby Fischer levels. Believe it or not, it would be even less likely that I would become a “Grand Master” Christian. That just isn’t going to happen. And because it isn’t going to happen, I need a Savior, the only Grand Master. And this Grand Master has come to give me His honors, His rights, His title.
But more than that, He has promised to come and to play with me, to teach me, and to let me learn from Him, so that together we may play together for all of eternity. Thanks be to God for this Grand Master who is Jesus.