The game lasted about three hours (give or take). From time to time, one of my children would ask if I could change the channel to something else. I said "no", and found myself becoming increasingly annoyed. How could they possibly want to separate me from my beloved sports team bowl game? Can't they see how important it is? Can't they tell what's at stake?
After all the excitement was over, I wondered to myself: maybe it would have been okay to change the channel ... at least for a little bit? It appears that I had make a three hour section of time off limits for anything else in my life. We make time for the things that we really want to do.
Years ago, I used to play a board game with my family called Trivial Pursuit. This consisted of moving little plastic "pies" around the game board, based on whether or not I could correctly answer questions about trivia. One section of the pie was for entertainment, one for history, etc. If you were able to answer enough questions correctly for a particular subject, you would be rewarded with a slice of uniquely colored pie. The goal was to fill up your little 'plastic pie' with every slice.
I believe it stands to reason that if we think of this as an allegory about modern living, then we can assert we all have a "pie chart" that we could draw for our own lives. Maybe one section is for money, one section for work, one section for God, etc. In the board game, each section of the pie was the same size. But not so with real life. Often, if we are being honest, I think our slice for God is rather small. We might make time to watch every single college football game during the season, but find it difficult to make it to church service on Sunday morning. All of our slices are not the same size.
If our own personal pie chart corresponds to the alignment of our heart, then the question stands - have we made enough room in our heart for God?
An easy way to think about this is to address the universal concept of forgiveness. Why pick this concept instead of something else? Because I think unforgiveness is as difficult of a subject for Christians as it is for anyone else. At no point in time, between the beginning of all things until now, has there been a point where man hasn't struggled with this notion. In fact, I think that if they ever print a version of the Bible without any of the red text (especially the areas that teach on forgiving each other), many would celebrate. It is so very easy to allow grudges and unforgiveness to dominate our pie chart.
In Matthew 18:22, when Peter comes to Jesus and asks how many times he must forgive someone who has done him wrong, Jesus says, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."
The import is obvious, even if you don't know the symbolic meaning of the number seven in Scripture. Essentially, we must forgive people all the time. Now I won't dwell too long on whether or not this means we must invite people who have hurt us back into our lives (I don't think this is always wise). But rather, Jesus is telling us here that it isn't okay to go thirty years holding a grudge against someone. We must eventually forgive these people from our hearts, and simply wish them well. I may not invite the person who cheated me out of some money to dinner, but I'm not allowed to be mad at them forever either.
Sounds simple, right? Not so much. If forgiveness was the standard process, then the world would look and act a lot differently.
The Francis Chan book Crazy Love recounts many stories about people who are actually living out the Christian faith with reckless abandon. One account in particular struck a chord with me. It comes in chapter nine, when Chan talks about a woman named Rachel Saint (no pun intended). She was a missionary who found herself drawn to a tribe of people who lived in Ecuador called the Waorani Indians. They were a fierce people, known for bloodshed and murder. Forgiveness had no quarter with this group of indigenous people. In fact, new visitors didn't always come back alive!
After many years, the Waorani tribe eventually took Rachel in, and listened to her recount stories about the Gospel in their own language. Their culture of revenge and hatred was eventually transformed by God's love. This is the ideal outcome for any mission work I would think. But it wasn't a group of people or a large church that accomplished this. It was God, working through one person, over a period of time. Rachel's pie chart contained only one slice, and that was obedience to God's Word.
Have we made room in our hearts for God's edicts of love, compassion, and obedience? How many redundant slices have we accumulated in our own personal pie chart? Is the slice dedicated to God the largest one?
My heart-felt advice is ultimately to simply toss out the idea that we should put God into one drawer in an overcrowded desk. Give up your whole heart to Him, and let everything else fall where it may. This attitude may lead you to Ecuador like Rachel, or it may lead you down the street to a neighbor's house. Either way, we make time for the things we really love. Make sure one of those things is God.
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