"Do you want to play Scrabble?" our son Greg asked last night. Of course! We hadn't done that in ages. I dragged out our wonderful, giant Scrabble set that was stored in it's huge box under the bed. It sits on an elevated turn-table making it necessary for me to get a taller chair (am I shrinking?) to comfortably view the large tiles in their grid.
The game went fast at first. My husband started off with a bang due to a fortunate selection of a few letters of high numerical value that just happened to make words, however tiny, on spaces that doubled or tripled their impact. I couldn't believe it when I challenged his word and the dictionary revealed it to be the word for a letter in the Hebrew alphabet!
Then later, when he was still on a roll, he wrote the word, "fag," for multiple points. "That's not a word!" I exclaimed, but he insisted it meant tired from working, "You mean fatigue!" I protested. This time I looked it up and had to laugh at what I read: To make tired by hard work!
Hey, I was supposed to be the Scrabble champ! All our scores began to rise, even though I was lagging embarrassingly behind. (Of course, it was because of bad letters!) And it seemed every time I did have a zinger ready to go, someone got in my space! I also didn't approve of my opponents' practice of looking up words before they played them, but it was all I could do to keep from doing it myself a few times!
As the hour grew late, we wanted to quit, but the lure of the board kept us transfixed. Finally we all ended up with one unplayable letter and called it quits. I kidded Howard that he was like the runner or race horse that didn't pace himself, sprinting ahead early and then not having the stamina to win. And I was pleased that slow and steady worked for me, coming up from behind and having the high score at the end of the game.
Life is a lot like a game of Scrabble. We have to work with what we have been given, just as we make words of letters we have randomly chosen. We are born into different circumstances to our own particular parents, and there is no one else exactly like us. Even though we have no control over our inherited genetics, or possibly even our environment, it is still up to us to take from these components and make something of them. Our imagination, ingenuity, education or skill, applied to our situation can make a life uniquely ours, and a very satisfying one, at that.
The Bible says that he formed us and knew us in our mother's womb, and knew our days before any of them came to be, Psalm 139:16. Some say He even planned where we would live, according to Acts 17:26, which says, "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation."
Since God put so much planning into our lives and went to all the trouble to make us so intricately and marvelously unique, who are we to complain about God's workmanship or our lot in life? After all, we can do what no one else can do--be our self! And we can finish strong!
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