I'm not much of a strategist when it comes to board games. I don't necessarily have a plan formulated before I start. This isn't because I'm not competitive - I hate losing without a fight.

Though I may not be able to articulate a strategy per se, I do know that winning involves taking appropriate risks when the opportunity presents itself. This, I find, often yields its reward. Overthinking can lead to a paralysis that hinders you from the game.

In life, the sensible (now growing older) side of me often rationalizes decisions to its safest (or most convenient) outcome. I do not know the work of God who makes everything, and yet I so often I think I do.

Wisdom is hard earned, yet a little folly spoils it - bearing truth that a good name is worth more than riches (Proverbs 22:1). Wisdom is conditioned upon humility. That is, we must be taught to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12). It can't be had trusting one's own mind (Proverbs 28:26), but is to be asked in faith of God who gives generously to all without reproach (James 1:5-6). Truly, it is the fear of the Lord that is the beginning of all wisdom (Proverbs 9:10). Oh Lord, how I need Thee!

"He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity. "Ecclesiastes 5:10

I usually don't think of myself as overly controlled by money. Yet I get uncomfortable when I compare myself against my peers, having subtly bought into the assumption that earnings speak worth and value. To make myself feel better, I chalk it up to the fact that I'm a teacher, which is the equivalent to humanitarian or charity work - practical sainthood, of course.

So maybe I do have a bit of a problem. As much as I say that I'm free from the love of money, I can't help but be obsessed by it at times, in a way that no pay raise ever seems to quench. Scripture is wise to often speak to us using monetary terms, because it is something we all deal with, whether rich or poor.

Perhaps, then, it is for this reason that a statement like this takes on such great significance:

"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." 2 Corinthians 8:9

As a child, I was always the youngest in my class - just as I turned another year older, everyone was turning the next year older. And so I was perpetually behind, helpless to do anything about it. As an adult I realize that I have a similar obsession with time. I still feel I'm behind my peers in the so-called progression of life. If you had told me ten years ago where I'd be in life, I would have been despondent that time would not have revealed more. There is another sense of time that occupies my heart in a completely different way. It's the sense that eternity exists, and that this linear progression through life is indeed headed somewhere. God, who is atemporal, is completely outside of time, yet reveals himself throughout the thread of human history. He has made everything beautiful in its time, and I persist knowing that what God does endures forever. He can be trusted! Amen.

I found myself frustrated this week as I saw a lot of work that I put into a project slowly unravel because of someone not as thorough on her end of the job. It made me wonder why I went through all the trouble in the first place, and how being excellent in the end still cost me. Meaningless! All is meaningless. A chasing after the wind.

I always want my work to count for something, but often in the end all my toil results in nothing. If I did not believe that my work matters to God in that I am to go at it heartily, knowing that it is in fact Christ that I serve, my efforts would be meaningless indeed.

I am one who loves to learn. Call me a nerd (no offense taken). I find it intoxicating to sit in a library with books spread all around me, reading and researching. To others, this makes them want to throw up.

In this age of the internet where the answers to many questions are a Google search away, there are moments where there is nothing more I want to know. Oh, but the internet is endless - I know! But yet there is a certain futility to the endless accumulation of knowledge that even this pursuit in itself is a turn off.

It's an unhappy business that we humans engage in to seek out all the glorious riches that wisdom has to offer. And yet Christ - the very wisdom of God has been revealed, and we still go searching! This is folly indeed.

Before beginning a new semester of teaching a wave of helplessness washes over me as I look down the prospect of once again leading a group of students through an established set of course outcomes. It takes a certain amount of work and effort to get them all clued into a routine and marching to the same beat. And even after having done so, it's always true that I have noncompliants, and am never without a semester where someone hasn't neatly followed the order that I prescribe.

After the same rigamarole again and again, I realize that there's not much of anything new that I haven't seen before. A decade of teaching earns you this perspective.

There's a certain amount of futility that accompanies endless cycles of the same thing. Sometimes I'm running that hamster wheel so hard that I lose sight of any forward trajectory. Slowing down that wheel to take stock of an eternal perspective takes real effort. I'm somewhat in the middle of this and realizing that I need to make this more of a regular thing.