The Game of Life

Forever, O LORD, your word stands firm in heaven. Your laws remain true today, for everything serves your plans.  (Psalms 119:89, 91 NLT)

When I was growing up, my neighborhood friends would play all kinds of games.  One of them was the Game of Life.  In it, you would spin the spinner, move your car, get a job, get married, have children, make decisions about how to spend money, and eventually reach the end where you became rich!  (I'm not going to comment on how close this is to reality.)


One of my friends always liked to be the banker.  She also didn't like the tedium of doing the math for different people with different paychecks on payday.  So, she would give us all the same job, skip the first part of the game, and move right on to the marriage part.


Now I ask you, did she change the rules?


Let me ask it a different way.  If there were a "Game of Life" tournament with local, regional, and national finals, would they play using my friend's rules?  Of course not.  They would use the rules printed right in the box top (they used to do that back in the day).  My friends rules wouldn't count at all.  Why?  Because she didn't make the game.  They did!  As the maker of the game, they get to set the rules.


Our life really is the same.  As the maker of life, God gets to set the rules.  We may think we have the ability to change them, but we don't.  We only get to follow them or break them.  We can set up little (or big) groups of people who all agree to "change" the rules, but none of us have the right to change them.  We didn't make the game.  We don't get to make the rules.


Ultimately, God's rules bring us down to one question.  Do we want to be with Him or not?  He makes the rules.  We get to choose.