Chutes or Ladders

Jesus offers not the "Ladder of Success" but the "Chute of Service."

Remember when you were little? When you were too small and young to do certain jobs or chores around the house? How exotic, exciting and enticing those tasks appeared. If only you were big enough to run the vacuum cleaner! To push the lawn mower! To wash the really high windows! Two-year-olds love to get pint-sized brooms and mops and sweepers--acting out all the work that goes along with them. But somehow the allure fades fast.

Then, as we grow older it slowly begins to dawn on us that as we give more of our lives to working our way up the "ladder of success," the problem with finally getting what we want is that then we've got it! The longed-for prize becomes just another new responsibility, another step on the ladder. "Success" is still somewhere else. Or as an old French proverb puts it: "You not only have to want what you want, but you have to want what you want leads to."

Unfortunately, we've also been willing to strap our Christianity--our missions, our ministries, our...