It's all in the card!

What’s in your wallet? No, I’m not a Capital One Commercial. It’s this nagging bulge on my backside. It’s amazing what you can learn when you open your wallet. I’m being held captive in a prison of plastic. I’m not talking credit cards. I’m referring to the other cards that seem to be multiplying and having Credit Card Kids in my billfold.

Here’s just a sample of what I dug out the other day.

AAA Card
Safeway club card
Starbucks gift card
Greenhouse Café punch card (one full and one half full)
Promise Keepers membership card
Promise Keepers card (last year)
Promise Keepers card (2 years ago)
ATT phone card (Have no clue how many minutes are on the thing)
AARP (Oops! How did that get there?)
Cutting Edge card (Local gym. They know me so they don’t ask for it)
Hollywood video (They don’t ask for it either)
Regal Crown Club Card (You attend 50 movies and get a free kernel of popcorn.)
Powells Book Store gift card (No idea of amount)
Barnes and Nobel book store membership card (at think it earns bonus points)
Cosco Card (Enter and spend)
Scooters Coffee (I forget where that is. It’s near Albany I think.)
McDonalds gift card (I know where that is)

We use these crazy cards all the time. Gift cards are redeemed for gifts (Plus they’re easier to wrap and easier to find the right size). I can redeem my coffee card and a get a free latte. The card provides some sort of benefit or privilege.

What we do in our daily life with these cards is a concept fresh out of the New Testament. We REEDEM a card, to get a gift. What we do in stores with plastic cards, Christ did for us with a wooden cross. He redeemed us. We’re called to do that for others as well.

Consider that great line in the Lord’s prayer “Forgive us our debts, as we forget our debtors. (Matthew 6:12). We forgive, or redeem people. So the next time you pry a store card, or gift card from your wallet or purse, think

Christ
Always
Redeems
Debtors

The card in your hand of course does not measure up to Christ on the cross. But we can have a plastic prompter to remind us of the redemption of the Lord. When you trade in a gift card, remember Christ’s gift of salvation on the cross. When you show a card to get a discount, or a service, remember to cut some slack to someone who has wronged you. When you show a membership card, remember that in Christ we are members of Christ’s church and He loves us.

It’s all in the cards!

Suckered by Sudoku

It’s my mother-in-law’s fault. We were on vacation last week with Joni’s family. Joni’s mom, Betty had brought Sudoku, a board game version of the popular newspaper puzzle. Joni and I are now addicted.
The word is pronounced, Su – Doe- Ku it’s a Japanese word that means “mental torture that can become addictive over time.” The puzzle itself is seductively simple. It looks like a crossword puzzle minus the words. Its nine blocks long, and nine blocks wide. Thus you have 81 blanks of terror. There are random numbers in a few of the blocks. The goal is to fill in the blanks. You have to get the numbers, 1-9 in each row and column and each small grid of 16. You can’t repeat a number. There is only one correct solution and about 100 wrongs ones. Trust me on this.
It’s one of those activities in life like cobra charming that looks easy from a distance and is really wild when you do it yourself. But I’m a good sport, so I tackle a puzzle. Actually, it’s fun. It’s also very challenging. After about an hour and a half, I did what every college educated, logical, man of the cloth would do in these situations.

I cheated.

Hey, they put the answers on the back of the game card! I was just making sure I had the right number. If you get one number wrong, you are screwed up. (Technical puzzle solving term) Thus, it’s helpful to do these puzzles in pencil, rather than pen or crayon.
When we got home from vacation, I thought I would get some peace from this puzzle panic, and then Joni comes home from the grocery store. It seemed that one of the Sudoku books was taunting her at the check stand, so she had to buy it. The problem with the book is that we only have one. There are two of us in this marriage. So now we have Sudoku Wrestling to see who will get to do the next puzzle. We try to do these things while we watch T.V. in the evenings.

I say try, because unlike myself, Joni can multi-task. She can do a puzzle, do cross stitch, watch T.V. and hold an intelligent conversation all at the same time. Me? I have to have complete silence to tie my shoes. Thus, she can do more puzzles than I can. We also have a little competition in the book itself. We write notes on the top of each page, summarizing our puzzle experience. Joni smugly writes, “I did this one correct on the first try.” I write on my mine, “This took me 3 days and 400 eraser marks.”

I wonder if they have support groups for this sort of thing? The meeting would open with, “Hi, I’m Bob, and I’m a Sudoku addict.” In my group, I’m guessing there would be complete silence inn the group because everyone would be busying trying to place the #3 in the right spot.

They tell me that you have to use logic and reasoning to do Sudoku. That makes sense. That’s why people don’t do these puzzles during church. Many people think you have to check logic and reason at the door when you come to church, or read the Bible. Nothing could be further from the church.

The Bible tells me that I serve a Sudoku Savior. Look at Isaiah 1:18, Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.

We had sin in our lives. Sin has a price. Jesus paid the price for us and offered us that as a gift. We receive the gift it and we have eternal life. It’s simple logic. The Bible is logical and reasonable. If you don’t believe me, just sneak a peek at the answers in the last book in the Bible and we find out that God wins, and we win!

Now if I can just get that puzzle book away from Joni….