The Marbles of Life

Have you ever heard the legend about the stork that delivers babies to the expectant parents?  Well, I was daydreaming about that a little and figured that if it was true, the stork would get its babies from Heaven. You can just imagine all the little babies, lined up in a row, waiting for God to send them off to Earth.  I can imagine God, sitting up there on His throne, holding each of them close, calling them by name, and breathing life into them.  He hands each baby a small bag filled with marbles and says, “This is your life.  Spend it wisely.”

Well, the little babies get down to Earth and start to grow up.  What do they do with their gift from God?  They spend it recklessly – giving it to different idols – money, music, television.

Finally, they spend their last marble and come crying back to God – not necessarily babies any more, but young men and women, ruined by alcohol, smoking, and premarital sex.  Their life is in shreds and all they have to offer God is their empty bag of marbles. They cry for forgiveness.  They cry for God to intervene in their life and make it whole.

God begins to run towards them, with open arms, saying, “Come to me my sons and daughters.  I’ve missed you. Come home to your Father.”  And the young men and women run to God, talking refuge in the palm of His hand.

Obviously, the above story is false.  We are not given a bag of marbles when we are born, but we are given a much more important gift – a life and a heart.  Every breath we take is owned by God – we are living on borrowed time.

God tells us to use our life wisely – we only have one, but we don’t listen.  We refuse to change our selfish ways.  Instead, we go into life looking out for ourselves.  We have the mentality that we are gods and we are the most important thing in this universe.  We give our lives away to whatever looks good.

I kind of think of it like a big circus fair, with many, many appealing, colorful tents set up.  There’s flashing lights and loud music, so we’re attracted.  The tents advertise alcohol, smoking, bad movies, and disobedience.  It looks good.  It looks like fun.  We buy into every offer we see.

And it is fun – for a fleeting second.  After that, it becomes enslaving and addictive.  We are trapped and there is no way we can get out.  Before we know it, we have spent all our marbles.  We are in a helpless predicament, stuck in the downward slide of sin leading only to death and destruction.  There is no exits or u-turns – it’s a one-way road.

The only way we can get out is if we admit that we are trapped and if we cry out to God.  He will listen and He will welcome you home with open arms.  He takes you off the side of destruction and sets you on the ladder of truth.  It looks harder, but you think it’s worth the effort.  Before you start climbing, He says, “I have another present for you.”

He reaches out His hand into that rambunctious, noisy fair and He collects all of the marbles – the pieces of your life that you had carelessly thrown away.  He puts them back in that little tattered bag of yours and hands it to you.

He has wiped your sin clean.  You are living on a clean chalkboard with no marks or scratches to ruin it.  You think about where you should spend your marbles this time and you know the answer.

  

You give it all back to Him.  You silently hand Him the tattered bag, no full, and say, “This is for You.”

In return, He gives you a small bottle.  This one doesn’t include marbles but a liquid of some sort.  The bottle is marked “love”. “I am Love,” God says. “There is no way you can love without Me.  You will have enough love for everyone.”

The next part of this life is where most of us are now.  We have given God our life and He has given us love.  We have love for everyone and that is part of what sets us apart in this world – our love.  Non-believers can’t truly love with God’s kind of love because they don’t have God.

Now, that we are on the ladder of truth, we have everyday choices to make.  You still stumble, you can still visit the carnival of the world.  The tents still seems very attractive, but you know better.  You know that all your marbles belong to God.

Gradually, though, we begin to want our marbles back and we begin to take them back.  We make excuses.  Maybe we say, “Oh, I’ll skip devotions today – I need to e-mail so and so.” And we grab a few marbles back or we say, “I know God wants me to witness to the girl down the street but she’s just so weird.” And we grab a handful of marbles.

Often our time and energy are filled with something else.  We spend more time thinking about the cute guy two rows away from us in school.  We think and daydream about Him constantly and God just doesn’t seem as important.  We grab another handful.

This is a day to day struggle for everyone.  Every day we need to consciously give our marbles, our whole heart, back to God.  We need to release the ones we are grabbing onto tightly and surrender control.

God needs to be the pilot of our ship or we’ll go off course.  Think of your life as a ship.  Only one person has the map of Eternity Seas and that is the pilot, God.  When you try to steer, you get lost because you don’t have the full map.  You only have a small piece of it.

God should be ruling our life – He should hold the marbles.  We mess up sometimes and take back marbles or give them away and once again we come crying to God.  He only has a few marbles left. You see the shabby marbles sitting in His hand and you cry.

God reaches down and wipes away your tears.  He says, “Do not cry.  Come home to me.” And you eagerly run into His outstretched arms, back where you belong.

Once more, God reaches down into your little world.  He gathers your marbles and puts them in your bag.  You give them all back to Him.

We mess up constantly, but God will always forgive us; He will always welcome us back and collect our marbles for us.  He will love us no matter what.