At the moment, most people with children know that Sainsburys is giving out packs of Lego cards for every £10 spent. An awesome way to get children to pester their parents to shop at Sainsburys!
There are 140 cards to collect and so you end up with multiple copies of some and then there are others you don't have at all. The way to complete your set (short of your parents spending thousands of pounds at Sainsburys) is to trade with others. You give them a card they need and they give you one you need.
For each of you, the other's card is more valuable to you because it's one you don't have. So you both end up happy. (I have also been teaching my son the joy of generosity and of giving cards away free to those who don't have any that he needs.)
Similiarly in an online game in Roblox, you have pets that collect coins and then use the coins to upgrade your pets or buy better ones. You can also trade pets with other players. When my children first wanted to play this game, I said I'd check it out. I ended up frittering away over an hour of my time collecting coins, trying to understand the game and wondering if there really was any more to it than that. I totally didn't get the whole trading thing so I didn't really do it except for once to check out what it was.
It seemed fine so I let my children play it. When they went on the game, within 10 minutes they were way further on in the game than I had got to because they did some really awesome trades where they gave a basic pet away and were given multiple super duper pets in return. These pets could collect coins way quicker and enabled them to get into areas of the game that are blocked off to people until they have collected enough coins.
I don't know why those other players wanted my children's rubbish pets and were so generous in giving away amazing pets. I've been wondering about whether later on in the game you need a basic pet again for some reason. Or maybe they are just super kind players helping new people along to get into the game. Right now, I don't know.
But it got me thinking about trading. Trading works because the other person has something you want and you have something they want.
It got me thinking about the most awesome trade of all. The one of Jesus' righteousness for my sin. This trade enables me to get into Heaven, which is a place I could never get into by trying to earn 'coins' by my own efforts at being good.
Why would God want to make that trade?
The Bible says the answer is: love.
Does God really want my sin? Not really. But He does want my heart. He wants my love in return. That is so valuable to Him that it was worth sending Jesus to die on the cross for.
In the game my children play, when someone wants to trade with you, you can accept or reject the trade.
And that really is the biggest question of all: will you accept this trade or will you continue to rush around trying to collect as many coins as you can in your own strength?
My children were delighted to gain so much by their trading.
Why do we find it so difficult to accept this trade with God?
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