Chess and Tiles

Your word is a lamp to my feet
and a light to my path.
Ps. 119:105

When it comes to decisions, I can be chess player. Chess is all about control—control of the board, control of your opponent. Control is gained through meticulous planning and manipulation through the careful consideration of every possible move and countermove. I end up believing I can think myself into right decisions, and that I can solve any problem if I just think hard enough and approach it from every possible angle. I seek counsel. I pray. I think. I weigh. I count costs. I seek control through seeing all ends of every possibility—just like a chess player.

When I was on the verge of graduating college—and filled with worry over entering unscripted life—my old pastor and dear friend grabbed me by both shoulders in the church foyer and placed me in the middle of a floor tile. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” he quoted to me. He pointed at the floor. “A lamp isn’t a powerful light. Maybe enough to illuminate the tiles touching yours, but the ones beyond, you aren’t meant to see.”

What are the tiles of life? Months. Next week. Maybe even tomorrow (“Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Mt. 6:34). What happens after you ask her out—if she says “yes?” If she says “no?” Where do you go? What do you do? What will the next date be? When will you meet the family? Do you talk to the father, is it that sort of family? When will you propose, and how will you do it? Will she want to be married at home or…the questions keep coming, tiles and tiles away from where you stand.

Decisions about work and school can snowball the same way. You imagine the tile you want to be in—some kind of fuzzy reality that resembles something you desire—and you try to plot the course to it. Enormous weight is put on the immediate decision at hand: it can make or break your future happiness. One wrong move could derail the works.

God has not called you or me to be master chess players. He has called us to pray, think, trust, and then act. The Bible is filled with men of action—some with more thought than others—and they made some tremendous mistakes. Yet God’s plan stood. He worked his sovereign will in the midst of his people’s failures and triumphs. So it is with us as well.

In our Father’s sovereign hands we are completely free to act in the wisdom he has given us. He is a good Father who gives good gifts (Mt. 7:11), and he is completely for us (Rom. 8:31-32). He stands on his faithfulness to his people throughout redemptive history: he cannot be doubted. So if he is unconditionally for us, his people, and he has promised that all things will work together for our good (Rom. 8:28), then in the truest sense of these things we cannot mess up when we make (amoral) decisions. We are free to decide, and then to trust our good Father to act in and through the consequences of our decisions for our ultimate good. There is no real reason to fear the darkness in the tiles we cannot see. He knows what’s there, and he will guide us.

N.B. I wrote mostly concerning relationships, but this also applies to work-related decisions, and even things as small as when to get the tires replaced on your car.