Dear Church Family,

One of the benefits of being your pastor is that I get to observe many of the God moments in the lives of His people. I see how the LORD works in our time of need as well as our time of plenty. We rejoice over salvations, baptisms, songs sung, sermons preached, lives changed, and we weep over illness, disease, and death, but we also know that is not the final word—God works to redeem all things. In light of that, I heard a pastor share the following story that made my day:

In The Louvre museum in Paris, there is a painting called Checkmate. The Devil’s sitting on one side, there’s a chessboard, and there’s a guy sitting on the other side, and the guy sitting on the other side has his hand on his head.

And he looks like he’s in desperation. And there had been a group of world champion athletes that were being given a special tour. And in the tour was a world chess champion, and he comes walking by the painting, and the guide is explaining the paining to him, “This is a picture of an artist rendering of someone who lost the battle with the devil.” And the group moved on to the next painting, but the world chess champion stayed there, and he just kept looking at the painting.

And soon they noticed that he was not with the group, the tour guide came back and said, “We’ve moved on. Are you coming?” He said, “Well, I’ve been looking at this painting.”

And the guide said, “Yes. It’s called checkmate. The Devil’s laughing, the man has lost.” And he said, “Yes. I’ve been noticing that. But, I’ve got a problem.” And he said, “Well, what do you mean?” He said, “Well, you know, I’m a world champion chess player, and I spend my life playing chess, and normal people don’t always see what a world champion chess player sees, but when the group walked off, I looked at the devil laughing, and I looked at the man in desperation. But I noticed something on the chessboard.” He said, “Either they going to have to change the painting, or they going to have to change the name.”

And the guide said, “Well, why are they going to have to do that?” He said, “Well, you know, when I observed the board, I found out the King still has one more move.” Whatever your struggle in life, know this—the King still has one more move!

Press on,

Mark