Patience

What is it about patience?

I’ve played poker online. Play money only. And I like to play in 10-player tournaments. We all start out with $1500 in chips. Usually, within the first couple of hands, someone will go “all-in,” that is bet all their chips. And 9 times out of 10 they will lose. To win about 75% of these tournaments all I have to do is be patient and wait for the impatient, and mostly immature, players to blow all their chips.

But this isn’t about winning at poker. It’s really about life, I think. Waiting till all the “fluff” and “stuff” gets out of the way before you really play. I don’t pretend to know much about military strategy, but I would assume that it is the same kind of thing. There will always be someone who wants to get all he can right away and is willing to risk everything.

Maybe the mentality is that there will always be more to fill up the emptied bank account.

But life is rarely like that. Oh, a whole generation has been raised to believe that all a person has to do is deposit another quarter in the slot to replenish a “life” for a new game. But when it really comes down to it, there is no “new game.” This is the only game we’re given. And we don’t get unlimited lives – unlike most of the video games out there that have “cheat” codes that allow a “god” mode where you can’t be killed.

When I’ve played golf, sometimes I play “mulligans,” where you get to hit an extra ball if the first ball you hit doesn’t go where  you would like it to go (which often happens to me). But in “real” golf, you get no such mulligans. You have to play the ball you hit, whether good or bad.

What’s the point? I’m not sure, really. Except to say that while I may not be able to make the best with what I’ve been given, I think that God can, and does, real good with what I’ve been given. Because what I’ve been given, He’s given me and He promises to do good with it, for the sake of His son Jesus Christ.

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