Español: Torre Jenga cayendo. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you ever played Jenga? It’s the torturous game where you remove blocks from a wooden tower and reposition them at increasingly higher levels. The game is over when some poor soul gets too aggressive in their placement and causes the entire tower to come crashing down.

It’s a fun game if you can handle the pressure, and if you don’t mind winning by default. That’s the thing about Jenga—you don’t actually win per se you just don’t lose. You win by surviving until someone else makes a fatal move.

This nerve-wracking, little game has a life lesson to teach us: it’s not the final move that determines our ultimate success—it’s all of the incremental moves along the way. I’ve lost my share of Jenga matches, and I’ve seldom lost because I was too reckless or aggressive in my final move—I’ve lost when my previous decisions weren’t able to support my final move.

I haven’t known many people who made one random, uncharacteristic move that destroyed the tower of their life. Rather, I’ve seen people make small, incremental decisions that gradually led to a significant downfall.

God wants us to make it for the long haul, and He wants our lives anchored firmly to a rock that is stronger than any of life’s storms (Matthew 7:24-27). We anchor ourselves to that rock by making the right individual decisions along the way.

When we crash in Jenga we can laugh and talk about what a stupid game it is, but we can’t afford to crash in life. Whether we’re trying to avoid a crash or rebuild after suffering from one, let’s make wise, daily decisions that anchor us to God’s storm-proof rock.