“‘Then, turning to the others standing nearby, the king ordered, ‘Take the money from this servant, and give it to the one who has ten pounds.’ “‘But, master,’ they said, ‘he already has ten pounds!’ “‘Yes,’ the king replied, ‘and to those who use well what they are given, even more will be given. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.”

Luke 19:24-26 NLT

This week I went to a fabulous Charity Ball for the kindergartens in the district I work in. It had a Great Gabsty theme. It was cute and everyone dressed in flapper style. The ball even had a mini-casino where adults bought mini-playing cards for chips to play Blackjack. The person with the most money at the night’s end won the pot for their group. It sounded like fun and God said do it. So I joined…

I didn’t win. Someone bet all in near the last rounds and got blackjack, hitting the jackpot. Then I found out that the rest of the people at the table were from the same group as him. A group that was not my group or even in my kindergarten. Still, I learned a lot from playing and it blew my mind.

Here’s a quick summary of Blackjack. The goal is to get to 21. Numbered cards are their value, face cards (King, Queen, Jack) are all 10 points, and Aces are 11 or 1. Now, as a player, the opponent isn’t the other players, you’re playing against the dealer. The game starts when the player places a bet (say 3 chips). If the dealer gets closer to 21 than the player, the player loses 3 chips. If the player and the dealer have the same number, no loss, no gain. If the player is closer to 21, double the bet (6). If the player gets Blackjack (21) then it’s triple the bet (9). 

So that’s the game. Now there is a strategy to playing the whole game but that’s not what I learned. I learned about endurance. Also about the blessing and struggle of being the person who gets ten pounds. 

See, what happened was that I bought me and my coworker a mini-card to play. She didn’t know how to play but I did. So I began praying and playing. Then I was winning. So people kept giving me their mini-cards to play. It’s not like we get the money back if we win and we can’t return the cards. So I could have wasted it all because I only paid for two cards (6 chips) and I definitely played more than two cards’ worth of chips, had worked all day, and was extremely tired because it was past 10 PM. 

It would have been so easy to be reckless and make big bets or keep going all in till I had nothing left. But then God said, 

“Let your moderation be known unto all man. I got your hand.” 

It was then I noticed people starting to rely on me for strategy. They were even calling me, “Mami”. Again, I knew how to play Blackjack but never did. But to them, that didn’t matter. Me not knowing Hungarian didn’t matter. All they saw was the steadily growing towers of chips I had. At first, I panicked, thinking I needed to win all the time, but then God calmed me down by repeating:

“Let your moderation be known unto all man. I got your hand.” 

I relaxed and leaned into God. Playing for so long definitely felt like carrying ten pounds for an hour, but I did it. With God, I did it. Again, I didn’t win the Jackpot, but I stayed in the game. Then, when I was thanking the dealer, he looked at me and said,

“You played well. Good job.”

While the winner had left to tell everyone about the win, the dealer told me I played well (so did many others). That honestly felt like a win more than the towers of chips.

And isn’t that what we’re trying to do as Christians? 

We are trying to live life well so that when we’re with God, in His eternal house, He will forever tell us, “You live well. Well done my good and faithful servant.” In life, it is easy to get distracted by the towers of chips or the jackpots others get or even our own losses. Sometimes we forget to live life well. 

Even if living well means we miss out or lose, to the Dealer of Life, that’s part of the game, that’s part of life. God’s not looking at how many wins or losses we have. The jackpots or the busts. He’s looking at how we play. How we live. 

Jesus ends the parable of the pounds by talking about the reason for the King giving more pounds to the person with a lot of pounds already. It was because the King saw that the person knew how to use what they had well. People didn’t give their cards to the winner, but to me, the person who played well. The winner didn’t stay to listen to the dealer, I did. 

Losing is easy, winning is hard, but doing things well takes God.

So whether you have ten pounds or three chips, how are you living?