I have developed a new analogy for life here of late. Life is like a game of Rummy. Rummy was one of my parents’ favorite card games to play and it had many variations on a theme. You could play Gin Rummy, Millionaire Rummy or just plain old Rummy.
A few things these card games all have in common include trying to gather the cards with the greatest value from the deck to play in your hand and discarding the ones you don’t need. As each hand is played, you returned all your unwanted cards turn by turn into the discard pile, hoping someone else would pick them up or use them. I remember enjoying playing Rummy very much as a kid and for some reason I thought about this the other day, how life has become for some just one giant game of Rummy.
I’m thinking in particular about how some people seem to wind up in the discard pile of life. We can all admit that we have one of these discard piles if we are honest. The pile is filled with broken people that we no longer feel we need so we discard them and hope someone else will find them useful enough to pick up.
I have observed that in this cosmic Rummy game, it can become very easy to use those around us for our own personal advantage and if they help us gain a few points here or some increased status value there, we might keep those folks in our hands indefinitely and treasure them or even become quite possessive and protective of them. But the other individuals who don’t seem to offer much to our own benefit, those folks are quickly released and deemed not worth the effort. Time is valuable and they are simply not worth our time.
Maybe these people have been discarded so many times that they have come to believe the lie that their life has no value. Maybe they seem very unlovable and difficult on the surface, because the circumstances of their life have sent them a message that they are not significant, they have no purpose and therefore they should not expect anyone to treat them with respect. This damaging outlook creates a self-fulfilling prophecy where those that need the gentlest touch and the kindest word instead become treated with increasing disdain and rejection. Those that need the deepest measure of love often continue to find it the most absent.
I want to bring hope to you today if you have been feeling forgotten, rejected and discarded. I look at you and I see significance. I see that even in your brokenness and despair there remains promise and potential that can be redeemed from the pain of your past. I see someone so valuable that God would expend the greatest price – the life of His son – to redeem you and buy you back so that He could restore your every loss. I truly believe that no one is without purpose and even though every other person in your life may have tossed you aside and discarded you, today, Jesus wants to pick you up off that discard pile and add you to His hand, because your life matters.
