From Compassion to Checkmate
1 John 4:11 — Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.
It started with a chessboard and an almost-missed moment.
I have a really good friend named Martina—she lives in Shreveport—and one day she went out to coffee at her favorite spot. There was a guy there who was sitting outside playing chess by himself, and he looked up and said, “Hey, do you want to play?”
She thought, “Not really.”
But then something inside her nudged her heart, and she said, “You know what? Yes!”
She sat down, and they moved the pieces back and forth. Little by little, he started opening up. You could hear the disappointment in his voice. As they played, he started opening up. He told her he’d drifted away from Jesus after his great-grandmother passed away. Somewhere in his grief, he’d stopped believing altogether.
And listen, grief is grief. It doesn’t matter how old someone is or how long you’ve had them. Loss hurts. But what struck Martina was that this woman had lived to be 112 years old. What had been an extraordinary gift somehow felt, in his pain, like something had been taken from him.
But Martina didn’t argue. She didn’t preach. She just stayed and listened. She played another round, and by the time they said check mate, she already made the decision to come back.
Every week, she would make it her mission to play another round of chess with him. She knew his grief tried to rewrite the story about who God is, but she became determined to introduce him to God’s real love that tells a different story.
And not just her. She began pulling in a few friends and sending them to go and play chess too. To be community for this man.
And when Martina told me that story, I thought, “This is what love looks like.”
Love doesn’t always show up with the right words, but it always shows up.
Love shows up because we’ve already been loved first. As Christians, we’ve experienced the greatest love of all through Jesus.
So maybe it looks smaller than you expected. Maybe it’s coffee. Maybe it’s a park bench. Maybe it’s you and a couple friends deciding to keep showing up for someone who’s silently drifting.
And somewhere between the first move and the next, a person who thought God had abandoned him might begin to see that God was pursuing him all along.
All because someone pulled up a chair.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
- Who in your life may need someone to simply show up and listen?
- When has someone else’s kindness helped you see God’s love more clearly?
- Are you waiting for the perfect words when God may simply be asking you to be present?
- What “chessboard” opportunity might God be putting in front of you right now?
- How can you intentionally reflect the love you’ve received from Christ this week?
