Episode 333: I’m Talkin. . .Play

I’m Talking, episode 333, for September 1st, 2024.

This is Joel from the I’m Talking microcast, where I share my thoughts on a topic that has piqued my interest this past week.

This week, we’re talking play.

Play is a pretty simple word, and as I was thinking about it, it has so many different uses.

We can use it to talk about when we play a game, and there are obviously lots of games that can be played.

And there are times where we use it to talk about interacting with people, or oftentimes with kids, or in my case, with my grandkids, where we get to play.

And obviously, there’s lots of different ways to play there as well.

And then in a more maybe grown-up sense, but all through our childhood and into adult years, it stands for performance.

So you may go to a play and then you see actors on a stage or whatever it is.

So lots of different uses for the word play, most often in a very positive sense.

But on a serious side, looking at the word play, we can often get off base in the world, and then we start to play with things that are very serious instead of treating them with respect.

We might play at life instead of actually living life and being responsible.

We may play with God because we don’t believe he’s actually who he says he is, and there are serious consequences when we play at things that are very serious.

And therein lies the challenge for those of us who call ourselves Christians.

The one thing that is a misnomer about Christians is that we don’t know how to play.

We don’t know how to have fun.

We don’t know how to not be so serious or take the world so seriously.

And that is so far from what is true because God is telling us that he wants us to live a full, fun, joy-filled, satisfied, purposeful life.

And we get to play oftentimes because we are free to do so because we know who holds the rest of our life.

We have a freedom to play wholeheartedly because the serious parts of life we already have dealt with because we have accepted Jesus Christ as our savior.

When people choose not to take God seriously and to play around with devil worship or other types of things, then we get to show the joy of living, the joy of playing when we are free to do so because we are forgiven.

We get to show that even though life needs to be taken seriously, it is also fun and joy-filled.

We get to live freely because of what Christ has done for us on the cross.

And because we take that part seriously, our play holds so much more meaning as Christians.

So think about that.

We don’t always have to be serious.

We don’t always have to be frowning.

In fact, we should be smiling.

We should be full of joy.

And because we have taken the serious things of life properly in light of who God is, then the other side of life, the joy-filled, the play becomes that much more fulfilling.

Until next week, this is Joel from the I’m Talking Microcast.