By JC
Every deck of cards comes with 52 cards that know their place. Four suits, thirteen ranks, a clear pecking order. Then there are the two jokers, tucked in the back like relatives nobody invited but everybody expected. Half the games we play don’t use them at all. Most people toss them in the junk drawer with the dead batteries and the takeout menus from 2009.
I relate to the joker more than I’d like to admit.
The joker has no suit and no number. It doesn’t belong to hearts or spades. It isn’t a king, a queen, or even a lowly two. By the world’s measuring system, it’s nothing. And yet in the right game, that same card becomes the most powerful one on the table.
The joker started in America in the 1860s, added to the game of Euchre as the highest trump. Think about that. The card with no rank was brought in to outrank them all. In rummy and many poker games, it’s wild, meaning it can become whatever card you need. A card with no identity of its own takes on the identity the player gives it.
That sounds a lot like the Gospel to me.
Most of us spend our lives trying to earn a suit and a number. We want to be the ace, or at least a respectable face card. We measure ourselves against the rest of the deck and come up short. Some of us feel like we’ve spent years in the junk drawer.
But God has a habit of playing the cards nobody else would. He picked a shepherd boy over his older brothers. He called fishermen, tax collectors, and a persecutor named Saul. He chose what the world considered foolish to shame the wise. Our worth doesn’t come from the rank printed on our faces. It comes from the hand that holds us.
When Christ claims us, we take on His identity. We’re no longer defined by what we lacked. We become what He needs us to be, in the moment He chooses to play us.
So if you feel like the odd card out, take heart. You may be the wild card in His hand.
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”
1 Corinthians 1:27
About the Author: JC is a Birmingham-area musician, writer, and founder of We Rock Network.
