Keys

When I was a boy, we played street games, and ran around the neighbourhood in safety, along with a small army of other boys and girls, post war, and parents did not worry. They didn’t shout at us for making a noise, or getting excited. They had come through a war, and were just glad that their ‘babies’ were able to grow into troublesome schoolkids, and hopefully young men, and women. They knew the way it could have been, and could do little to change the course of history!

Not so the kids! We had a way out. If we were playing chase, or hide and seek, or kick the can, and we thought we were caught out either early or unfairly, we were allowed (under the rules of play) to put our thumbs up and shout ‘Keys’, or in my case the local word was ‘Bawlees’ (no, I don’t understand the word either) and this allowed us to play on as if we hadn’t been caught that time. It was a way out of our problem. How good it would be if we could do that in real life now, as older and more mature citizens, but we can’t. That was just a childish game, and there is no way we can put our thumbs up now, as adults, and shout ‘Keys’, or I have had enough. I have been caught out either unfairly or early.

Hold on. Don’t we believe in the God of the second chance? Didn’t Moses, Joseph, Jonah and the apostle Peter all get the chance to put their thumbs up, and a gracious God allowed them to play on in spite of their failings? In each of these cases, and many others recorded in the Bible, the end of the story was so much better, and I would suggest all because they had been given that second chance, and that thankful spirit within drove them on. We know the end of the story.

When (not if) you feel at the end of your rope, and can’t go on the way things are, put your thumbs up, say sorry (or in church terms, repent), and allow God to forgive your failing, and then you can carry on, so that the end of the story can be made right, better and clear. That may be important, first of all for you, but also for others who had been watching on the sidelines wondering how it would all end. Yes, I believe in the God of the second chance, and have had to use it myself. Haven’t you? Or maybe you need to play your ‘keys’ right now.