Keep Your Eye on the Ball!

That's a really strange title for a writing that has nothing to do with ball! But let me explain. There is an ancient game known as the "shell game." You may have watched it being played many times. In the game, an object is placed under one of three half nut shells. Then the shells are slidden around on the table top. Your part is to keep your eye on the shell that has the object under it. The controller's part is to distract you while he slides the shells around in an attempt to make you mistake the true position of the shell with the object. You may not realize it but you play a version of the shell game every day of your life!

Satan, the master of deception and our enemy as Christians, wants to keep your eyes and mind distracted from the important things of life. He doesn't get tired, and he doesn't quit! He want to distract us from praying, from reading the Bible, from having a real relationship with our husbands or wives, from teaching our children about the Lord, or from taking them to church. He is busy all the time keeping our eyes on the wrong "shell" in life so we might never win the prized of pleasing the Lord who has called us to live a pure life in Him.

The Lord has commanded us to, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul ad with all your strength and with all your mind; and 'Love your neighbor as yourself," (Luke 10:27). But how can we do that when we are busy with soccer games, shopping, play practice, providing for the family, and a thousand other distracting things? We are playing the "shell" game.

As we grow up our values change. When we get older, we think, "How could I have ever thought of "that" as being important. If we can determine the things of lasting value and concentrate on them instead of so many "other" things, we will have gone a long way toward winning the "shell" game. Know your Bible! Think about it all day long! Then you and I can win the game.