Play

I was in a discipleship class with my pastor on Wednesday when she asked us to describe our experience with the previous week's assignment - what we learned from it about ourselves and God's Kingdom.

The assignment required us to play. We were to discipline ourselves to engage in any sort of enjoyable activity that did not qualify as work (some of us are workaholics) and do it at least once a day.

The one-week prescription was supposed to be that simple: let down your hair and enjoy a guilty pleasure in the sense that you would naturally qualify it as "wasting time". Did it even need to be a discipline?

Yes, it did. At least for most of us.

We are adults. Disrupting the rhythm of our grown up routines with play of the spontaneous, and seemingly aimless kind makes us uneasy. It humbles us. We are forced to stop thinking about the future for a while - to lose the control that we think we have over our lives. But thereafter, there is freedom. We can do what we want, do what we love, and love what we do. We embrace the magic that tells us that fairy tales are plausible. And while we do, we indulge in the rest a little child enjoys (given a normal childhood of course), unsaddled by burdens to save the world. Or gain the world.

"...Truly I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matt 18:3)

A child who plays is a child whose most basic needs have been satisfied. She trusts that her next meal (or nap) will be there when she needs it, and thus, plays unconcerned with time and the tomorrows.

We can't enter the Kingdom without such faith in the Father - that the Right Person will take good care of us. This Right Person is in control of our lives, our problems, our future, and our salvation.

The discipline of play opens our eyes to how much control we still try to keep to ourselves.