It’s amazing how much you can learn by playing Chutes and Ladders with a preschooler.
Presumably, you can already recognize your numbers, and you probably know how to count, too. So there’s not much for you to learn there, even though it’s what your preschooler’s supposed to be learning. But there are plenty of other things you can learn, which you may never have thought of.
For example, did you know that you can learn patience? Lots and lots of patience, in fact. The way the game works, you spin the spinner and move your little person forward the appropriate number of spaces. You start out on the bottom row, going from left to right. When you get to the end, you go up one row and start moving back toward the left. Each square is numbered so you can remember which direction you’re supposed to be going. Your kids will probably get the idea that they’re supposed to move from one side of the board to the other. But they’ll forget which direction they were going, and if they don’t know their numbers, or if they forget to look at the numbers, they’ll take off in the wrong direction about half the time. You’ll have ample opportunities to say patiently, “No, this way, sweetheart.”
You can even learn about shortcuts and downfalls. See, if your move lands you on a square at the bottom of a ladder, you get to climb all the way to the top, bypassing the lower-numbered squares on the way. On the other hand, if you land at the top of a chute, you have to slide all the way down to a lower-numbered square—sometimes much lower. If you’re so inclined, you can teach your kids about the shortcuts and downfalls of life, and how sometimes you can climb way, way up or slide even farther down.
I’ve played this game a million times before, sometimes playing seven hundred games in a single day. But until the other day, I never thought about one particular aspect of the game.
When my kids were even younger, we didn’t always enforce the rules all that strictly. As long as they were playing by the general idea of advancing toward the last square, we figured that was good enough. Sometimes, we even let them take any path on the board they wanted, or take an extra turn. But recently, we’ve started to require that they play by the rules. So when Lindsey prematurely paused her token at the bottom of a ladder that would have led immediately to the end, I said, “Lindsey, you have to go two more squares.”
She obeyed willingly, finishing out the number she’d spun. But I knew she’d been tempted to take the unauthorized shortcut. And I realized that we as moms often face the same temptation.
I’m not talking about the temptation to hastily end a game that’s gotten too long or too boring. I’m talking about life, where it’s all too easy to use illegitimate shortcuts or unauthorized means to get to where or what we want.
Our kids are hungry and fussing, and we need a few moments’ peace to get our grocery shopping done, so we let them eat a grape or two from the produce aisle.
We really don’t feel like going to work on a particularly beautiful day, so we call in sick and then head for the lake instead of the office.
Or we resent the fact that our friends all have nicer homes than we do, so we buy an expensive home we can’t really afford.
Most of us hate to wait. We want what we want, and we want it now. As in, right now, not later, not some other day or month or year. Usually, we feel like we deserve what we want (as if it were possible to “deserve” any of God’s blessings). We feel entitled to it. And we resent having to wait. So if God doesn’t come through with what we desire, we go get it ourselves.
I can’t think of a better way to wreck our lives and end up with a bunch of what’s not good for us and what we don’t even really want than to take illicit shortcuts to get it. You see, if God requires that we wait, or that we not have a particular item at all, He has a reason. Making an end run around His reason and grabbing the goal for ourselves isn’t going to bring what we hoped it would. Oh, it may bring the object we wanted, but it isn’t going to bring the spiritual blessing we would have had by waiting, or by not obtaining the object at all.
Which is more important? The material blessing or the spiritual? We claim that the spiritual blessing is more important, that obedience to God is our highest value. But sometimes, we show by our actions that other things are more important.
What a witness to a watching world that would be if we showed them that we don’t have to have certain things or circumstances in life in order to be happy—that we’re fully content with God Himself being our portion, and consider ourselves abundantly blessed to enjoy what He’s given us, without having to try to grasp more.
We’d not only bless the world by showing them how satisfying our God can be; we’d also bless God’s heart by acknowledging that He’s enough for us. After all, what else do we really need?
Psalm 73:25-26 – Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.