Last week, our room was on the eighth floor – the VER-AN-DAH deck – at least, that’s what the elevator lady called it every time we stopped! The cool thing was, it was directly above the giant chess and checkers sets that were set up on the fifth deck.

The kids played around with the chess set, but I’m not sure any of them had a clue what they were doing, but – I watched several interesting matches of checkers, and it made me thing of how life can be like checkers.
First, you move forward, and everything is good for a while. Then, uh-oh -you might have to take a move back to regroup. Then, sometimes when it seems like there is no way out – one appears that you never saw before. (Oh how I love providence!) Maybe, the other person is on the “fast track” to success and jumps two of your checkers at a time, and you have to deal with envy and disappointment. Sometimes it looks like the odds are stacked against you (king me, king me), but it doesn’t mean that you’re out of the game. You just have to hang in there.
So many times people believe that once they become a Christian, everything will go their way. Our prayers should be that everything goes God’s way. He didn’t promise us that the way would be easy. He did promise us that it would be worth it and He would be with us until the end. God Bless, Courtney