Play Games for God?

Transcript

St. Charles Borromeo was one night with a group of people playing chess. This was a social evening; they sat playing chess. And somebody injected into the conversation that evening, "If you were going to die this very night, what would you do?"

And so one person said he would do one thing, one another. One would seek a reconciliation. Another would go to church.

Finally, the conversation came around to Carlo, and St. Charles Borromeo said, "If I knew that I were going to die tonight, I would finish this game of chess. Because," he said, "I began it for the glory of God. And I cannot think of anything that I would rather be doing when going to meet my Lord than a task undertaken in His praise."

You see, that is Christian maturity. And that's what the Bible is talking about when Paul says, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31). There's nothing very religious about eating or drinking. It's just ordinary life. But there's where I am called to glorify God.

from a talk called "God of the Commonplace" delivered in 1974 at the Layman's Leadership Institute in Atlanta, Georgia

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom . And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

(2 Cor. 3:17-18)

Image is "Intercession of Charles Borromeo" (1714), a ceiling painting for the Karlskirche, Vienna.