Card Game

I wrote the following in my journal, Christmas Day, 1997. It seems appropriate to share now.

[1997 December 25: Thursday, Christmas Day: 1626 hrs.] Each life is dealt a handful of painful hardship, cards of loneliness and loss. The longer one sits at the table, the more of these cards one receives! For some, joining the table only briefly, these are the only cards ever held. But, for most of us, together with cards of sorrow and solitude come cards of happiness and joy, dreams realized and hopes fulfilled. With the sorrows and the losses come thrilling victories and unexpected pleasures unspeakable. To endure the trials of misfortune well (waiting patiently for better hands) and to experience favorable cards with humility (knowing that lesser hands invariably follow) is a necessary part of life’s experience. 

I have lost my share of loves. Life’s marks have been carved deeply into my soul. I have seen the love of my life slip from my fingers into the murky depths of the past and I have longed with my whole soul to reclaim that love again. But it is gone - for now, placed permanently on “pause” - perhaps for the remainder of my life. But I will see the day when all my dreams will be fulfilled. Yea, greater things than this has God prepared for me, when I have proven faithful. And I have hope renewed, determined, and unshaken that through the gospel of repentance and a determination to serve Him to the end, I shall receive an everlasting reward of love forever, from Him, in a kingdom of heaven.

So far, that expectation has meant that I must give away everything material I hold dear: my loves, my dreams, my vain, personal ambitions. All must be left on the altar of sacrifice and obedience. Each night I renew this pledge, to sacrifice all former loves to Him, my God. This alone empowers me with the strength to continue, without which I could never have any other god than myself, with my own lusts and passions to command me. And my only hope would be in the arm of my own flesh - a god I have already proven to be a very puny and unreliable deity indeed! To trust in one’s self is to trust in nothing at all. As Moses sad, “man is nothing.” (Moses 1:10.) But now I know this for myself.