Everyday Moments

With your nearest disciples, especially the ones that call you mom, discipleship often happens in the everyday moments of life that you never saw coming.

Over the holidays, my family played games together more than we have in a long while. I come from a serious game-playing family, so this makes my heart happy. And at the stage of life we’re in, making it all the way through an entire game without a game-ending argument between kids is a major accomplishment. Last night, we played the game “Payday” and I was amazed at what unfolded...

In this game, you try to make it through the end of the month with more money than everyone else after paying all your bills and managing any debt accrued as the surprises of life come at you. At one point, two of our kids were neck and neck in the lead. One of them got a wildly generous hair and gave the rest of us some of his own money after noticing our financial struggles. In return, we as recipients found ourselves cheering for him when he did well in the game and even returning the generosity when we had a little more to give. The other kiddo continued to accrue money and safely protected it in savings until the game ended - a respectable strategy. Everyone started to notice the differences in the two approaches as we went along, and we remembered the story from the bible about the talents - how the master entrusted his money (“talents”) to three servants while he was away and the different choices they made to invest it.

The moral of the story is that God wants us to wisely invest all that he’s entrusted to us, which goes far beyond just our finances, and that he expects a return on his investment.

As the game wrapped up, the savings kid had a higher bank balance and was the winner. But I have to say, the high fives, laughter, camaraderie and communicable generosity that flowed across the table between the rest of us felt like the bigger win in the end. Surely there is a life lesson there for us all.