During our recent trip to Vegas, I watched the intense focus, the sagging milky-faced desperation, and the frenzied pushes of the slot machine buttons by the motley crew littered through billion dollar casinos. Towers of chips trembled their way from player to dealer. Were these people completely oblivious to their surroundings? How did they think those casinos were built and continued to stay open? Couldn’t they see that whatever they won, no matter how grand, paled in comparison to the opulence that surrounded them?

Then, a few days ago, I started reading John Ortberg’s, When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box. Have you ever been bitten on the butt by your own smugness?

A pastor at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California, Ortberg makes the point that none of us will ever beat the house because the real Master of the
Board is God. Our riches in this world never fully belong to us. We’re called, he says, to be “rich toward God” because, when the pieces go back in the box, “all that will be left is love.”

In the chapter, “No One Else Can Take Your Turn,” he discusses our God-given ability to make choices over our own lives, to not say “pass” when it’s our turn. Ortberg discusses Daniel in the Bible as the “champion of making wise choices.” You can read the Bible and his book for the whole story, but what intrigued me enough to write this post was Ortberg’s challenge of a “Daniel adventure.”

Here it is: For the next ten days, “pick some area where you can take action. And for ten days, choose to honor God in that area.”

How? Well, he suggests we can make choices about:

1. what we feed our bodies

2. what we feed our minds

3. reading the Bible

4. our attitudes

5. what we listen to

6. who we talk to

7. who we don’t allow to control our moods

The object of the game, he says, is to become “intensely aware of all the decisions” that are open to us.

If you want to play, what area will you choose? Come back in ten days. Let us know how well you played.