God save the Queen?

Being that I'm a nerd the game of Chess has always been exciting to me. It combines the elements of offense, defense, strategy, and sacrifice. The problem is that I'm not very good at the game of Chess. Recently I decided that, especially if I want to be a business personal someday, learning chess would be a good idea. It's a great way to pass the time and allows for good conversation while playing. I decided to learn how to play, and play well.

I played against my wife, friends, and even online. As most things in life you really have to practice to get better. I could easily see improvement in my game play. I started winning more and more games. I got brave enough to take on my computer in the game. Needless to say the computer even on a medium difficulty wiped the floor with me. I couldn't figure out why I was losing, and believe me I was losing badly. I decided to carefully analyze my style of game play and identify where my errors were. It was through this strange turn of events that God decided to teach me a very important lesson.

The lesson was about what's important. God who is creative enough to teach me something through a game I enjoy knows a lot about importance. Fitting that a lesson of importance would be taught to me through Chess, because there is clearly a importance hierarchy in that game, in terms of the pieces. Pawns are worth one point, knights are worth 3 points etc. It was based on this value structure that I learned my lesson. I started playing a game of chess against a very aggressive opponent on the computer. There were trades left and right, and finally I had a situation where my Queen was in danger. For anyone who doesn't understand how the game is played, the Queen is the most valuable piece. You only get one queen and it's worth nine points both on offense and defense. Being that my queen was in danger I moved her away quickly.

"Checkmate" pops up on my screen. I had just lost the game. "Why did I lose?" I thought to myself. I scrolled through the play history to figure out where my strategy failed. I was able to trace it back to a single move. It was where I moved my queen away from danger. I studied the board for a second, I was tricked. My queen was in danger and I moved her to save her, but in doing that I left what is truly important unguarded, my King. My King was left defenseless and I lost in the next move. I hit the "undo" button and replayed the game from this bad move I made, and guess what, I won! I was shocked. I sacrificed my queen and was able to walk away with a win. In that moment something clicked.

I had just learned at Intervarsity Large Group on Thursday about the dangers of being prideful, and losing sight of who's really the most important in a relationship with God. It now made a lot of sense. The queen in chess is certainly an important piece, but is it really the most important? Not at all, the King is. Without the King the game is lost, and if the game is lost the queen essentially has no value. It made me realize that In my life, I like to think I'm the most important in my relationship with God. I like to think that I'm the piece that's playing offense and defense. I'm the piece that's worth 9 points. But the fact is that my King is the most important. Without my King, this game is over. With this new perspective of focusing on the King as the most important piece I been able to improve my Chess gameplay, and now I seek to improve my life by humbling myself before my King, and acknowledging who's really important in the relationship.