Games people play.

The Mysterious Mr Goldman first appeared June 16. He was well dressed. Professional and precise. The vacant building in South Gate, London was just what he needed for his new carpet outlet. He paid the first months rent in cash, saying he didn’t have time to get to the bank.

A sign soon appeared in the window advertising a grand opening for September 1. But no one suspected what kind of grand opening he had in mind.  A Few days before September 1 a sophisticated alarm in the bank across the street was triggered three times. After the third alarm, a guard was posted who subsequently discovered three holes had been drilled in the vault floor. Mr Goldman’s elaborate scheme involving a professionally built tunnel under the street almost succeeded. He had gambled and lost.

Almost everyone is playing some sort of game with the future. Some, like Mr Goldman have their eyes on their own version of a grand opening and are too busy ‘digging tunnels’ into the future to think of the ultimate consequences. But millions of others, law abiding citizens, are playing games too. Whether a good person or a bad person scripture says, “None are righteous (Rom 3:10).” We can become too busy with work, learning, future dreams, pleasure, computer games, or outwitting enemies. We can become too busy with the stress and strain of competition, or life itself, to think further than our most immediate goals. What the Goal of life is or is not. What is the goal of your life?

The Easiest way to reach the future and seemingly most popular is to ignore it. People cruise along with no plans. Someone once said we should think about the future often, because we are going to spend a lot of time there. Most of us, most of the time do not think very far ahead.

The book of Ecclesiastes pictures life as a giant windmill, where one generation repeats the same cycle of birth, life and death as the one before it. Ask yourself this; when you have moved for the last time, built your last house, or made your last investment, or perhaps received your last degree, or made your last speech, played your last football match, been to your last church social, taken your last trip, planted your last garden, or said goodbye to your last guest, and you see death turning into our drive way – what then? Do you know where you are going? Have you been playing games with own future and your own destiny? Jesus said in Matt 16:26 “What Shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world yet forfeits his own soul?” Have you been concerned with the foolish trifles of life when great issues are screaming for your attention?