Wednesdays with Grace

We are going back to a different era here. Have you ever played marbles? Do people even play marbles anymore? In any event, if you have played, have you ever “busted up the game” with a good shooter, a larger marble often called an “aggie?”

Jerry Clower, the great country comic, used to tell a story about this. He played marbles as a young boy, and one day he managed to get his hands on some railroad standard steel ball bearings. He told how when he brought them to the marble game circle and used one of these “steel aggies” to shoot, he “busted up the game.”

I have always remembered Jerry Clower’s story when I am a part of a casual discussion about religion or spirituality. People still seem generally intrigued with the concepts of God, higher powers, or spiritual things someone brings up the name of Jesus. Just the mention of His name seems to “bust up the game.” Jesus’ very name divides.

Jesus is a person who refuses to be taken lightly – He is either the Lord and God of the Universe born as a human being, or he is the cruelest con man and hoax ever to walk the planet.

In Matthew 10:32-39, Jesus encourages us not to fear people: “So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I have come to bring peace on the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Although believers in Christ are to be loving and Spirit-led in our discussions of eternal life, Jesus is the issue, on God’s very word.

Next time you find a discussion going spiritual, gently pull out that “steel aggie,” the name of Jesus, and bust up the game. God uses that name to change destinies and eternities.

-Chris Heinss