Life is like a board game. I am thinking of something like Monopoly or Careers.
There is a certain amount of luck or chance. You throw the dice and you are stuck with that random integer. The skill, however, comes in the decisions you make. Although you are working within the confines of a game, the decisions are real and they have consequences to the game. What are also real are the emotions engendered. We can all remember being brought to tears by having to sell all our hotels and houses in a bravely fought Monopoly game or the excitement of throwing a six at just the right time. Even once the game has been packed up and put away those emotions of loss or defeat linger like sticky shadows. In the end though, real life goes on. The game was like a two dimensional interlude in three dimensional life.
In the same way, our life on earth is merely a 3 dimensional interlude in 4 dimensional eternity. There is a certain amount of luck or chance involved and we cannot work out of the boundaries defined by our given personality or circumstances. The choices we make, however, are where the skill comes in. The trick is to play our best game with what we are given, realizing that others play a different game according to the roll of their dice.
However, unlike a board game where real life goes on regardless of how we played the game and whether we won or lost, The game of Life is central to the unfolding of our eternity. It is the only method given to us to shape that eternity. The decisions we make in this life are crucial to our future life....and we only get to play once!
