Musical Chairs

Have you ever played musical chairs?

Were you good at it?

For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept until the judgement; and if he did not spare the ancient world, even though he saved Noah, a herald of righteousness, with seven others, when he brought a flood on a world of the ungodly; and if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction and made them an example of what is coming to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man greatly distressed by the licentiousness of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by their lawless deeds that he saw and heard), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgement especially those who indulge their flesh in depraved lust, and who despise authority. - 2 Peter 2:4-10

Peter sets out several examples of life's consequences in this long sentence from his second letter.  He wants us to take our decisions seriously.

Are you sure you want to do this?  Consider what has happened to others.

He is painting a picture of God that we may find troubling.  This is God the not-so-lenient, God the not-so-forgiving.  Is this the God we believe will rescue us from ourselves?

Peter says he is.  This is the God who looks to us to take the first step.  We must walk away from the temptations of this world and turn toward him.

So, how do we do that?

Peter tells us to be godly.  The definition of godly is devoutly religious, or pious.  How much help is that?  So many today feel they live a life that is good and just without being religious at all.  Others may feel they are deeply religious, but are they godly?  Are we worthy of God's grace?

In a way, this life is a game of musical chairs.  While the music is playing, we are happily racing around, focusing on the goal, not thinking of anything else.  And then the music stops.

Where are we?

Are we close to an empty chair?

Now we can't live our lives in the chair.  We need to be up and about.  That's how the game is played.  And we can't be thinking about the chair all the time either, or the game will not be fun.

If we let others take our chair, we lose.  Perhaps that is Peter's point here.

By focusing on winning, we gain the chair, but lose our true selves, the godly self that wants others to gain as well.

The musical chair game can be viewed many ways.  We may see ourselves doing the right thing by playing the game well, or we might see ourselves trapped in a competitive spiral that rewards selfishness and greed.

There is no point in playing the game if we don't fight for the chair.

We do not need to do anything to be worthy of God's grace.  We cannot make ourselves worthy.  We are God's children and receivers of his love and grace without merit.

So, what does God want from us?

I think the question is more, what does God want for us?

I think he wants us to help each other, to love each other, and to share the ever decreasing number of chairs with as many others as we can.

That may not sound like a fun game, but that may be because we haven't tried it.

More to come...

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