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I think I’ve mentioned that we enjoy playing the occasional card game on the computer. One that every member of the family plays is a game called Spider Solitaire.
The goal of Spider Solitaire is to move cards around until you have what ends up being seven sets, Ace through King, arranged in order. Each time one set is arranged, it is moved out of play and into a stack in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen.
The game is dealt in typical solitaire fashion with a series of face-down stacks and one face-up card on each stack. Then there is a pile of the excess cards that are dealt, one at a time, onto the face-up stacks when the player is “stuck’”.
Now that the whole premise of the game is clear as mud, there is actually a point to all of this explanation.
One day I decided to take a few minutes and play a game. Things seemed to be rolling along perfectly until I got to what seemed to be the end of the game. All of the face-down piles had been exposed, and I had plenty of space to maneuver the remaining cards. But, something was wrong. Somehow I was missing cards. I couldn’t find my nines and my fours. I scanned through each row multiple times, looking for those missing cards. But, they just weren’t there. I was stymied! How in the world could I be missing cards on a computer game!
Then it dawned on me to check the stack of excess cards. Sure enough, there were enough cards left there for one more deal – and all the missing cards quickly found their places.
It seems so simple and so obvious, but once again I saw some lessons through the simple and obvious.
First of all, I was certain. Because I was certain, I ignored facts.
I was certain that I had dealt out all of the excess cards. The truth was plain as day right there in front of me in the bottom right hand corner of my screen. But, I ignored it.
There are times in life when I am so certain about the options available to me. So certain, in fact, that I ignore the big and obvious truth – only Almighty God knows all the options. He might not have revealed them all to me yet, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more options there.
Secondly, when things seem impossibly messed up and without solution, as a child of God I can be certain that there is simply something that has not yet been revealed to me.
God does not promise an easy life. He does not promise an “everything is always going to be good” life. In fact, He instead promised difficulties. But, Romans 8:28 does tell us that when we love Him and are called according to His purposes, our good will come from whatever we experience, no matter how impossible or heart-breaking.
We frequently don’t see those hidden cards in life. But, that does not mean they are not there. In fact, the very truth that we are chosen and adopted children of God should make it obvious to us that those cards are there. They are just awaiting His timing to come out of hiding and pull everything into place perfectly.
Not Quite Ordinary 