On the Dangerous Playground — Small Stories of a Big God

“Just remember, when the unbelieving world hates you, they first hated me. If you were to give your allegiance to the world, they would love and welcome you as one of their own. But because you won’t align yourself with the values of this world, they will hate you. I have chosen you and taken you out of the world to be mine. John 15:18-19 TPT

“Is that my playground?” my sweet 3-year-old grandson asks, pointing to the image of an abandoned sliding board on my phone. I am keeping him distracted as we wait for the next round of examinations and intrusive scopes during our two-hour doctor visit. “Oh no, my dear boy, that most certainly is not your playground.” Perhaps I am reading too much Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The sliding board he is looking at is steep and high and long; a flat plane of metal with an inch or two of metal border between the rider and the ground. The steps that climb to the top are even steeper and even more fraught with the thrill of danger. I am reminded of my 4-year-old self, tumbling off the top of a much less dangerous slide, coming away with many tears and a broken arm to show for it.

Slides these days are of careful design, molded of colorful plastic, with high almost enclosed sides which shoot kids safely from the top to the bottom. Long gone are the steep slides, the metal clanging swings, and that whirling, spinning ride that looked like an open top; the oldest boys would run like mad alongside pushing it faster and faster until it slung you off onto the hard-packed red clay ground with your breath knocked out. I remember as a child being determined to make it through the next week with no new broken and bleeding scabs on both knees and elbows. It would not happen.

In my childhood, playing was a tough business. There were trees to fall out of, bikes to fall off of, and playground games that sent terror into my soul like Red Rover or Crack the Whip. It was all fun and games until somebody got hurt. And someone always got hurt.

I think our days now are encased in the philosophies of safety and careful-mindful play. I think of my mother-in-law refusing to buy my children 'educational toys'. I mentally rolled my eyes at the time – but these days I get it. What have we done in trying to protect ourselves and our children from the hard and dangerous things of life? Who have we shortchanged with our protective hand and insistence on fair-play?

This is a question I am wrestling with these days. Have I become too cautious, too passive, too content as I wrap myself in a soft cocoon, where I am deaf and blind to the cries out there? My armchair is comfortable. My door is closed and locked. No need to leave all this safety for harder things. It is dangerous out there.

God does not encourage us to live in a safe place. God’s stories are stories of people fighting for their lives. I read the songs of David; he cries out to the Lord his God for leading the battle, pursuing his enemies and destroying them, consuming them, crushing them never to rise again. (2 Samuel 22 is powerful reading!)

I look at the words of Jesus and he is not far behind in the fight. Tell me that ‘take up your cross and follow me’ didn’t strike fear into the hearts of those listeners who had seen up close and personal the blood and horror and humiliation of Roman crucifixion. (Matthew 16:24-26).

He sent his disciples out “as sheep in the midst of wolves” with the admonition to be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16). Beware of men, he warned; be like a serpent who is shrewd and discerning, camouflaged, avoiding the snare. Be as a harmless sacrifice, filled with the bringing of God’s peace in a world of purposefully hostile wolves. These were images of danger and destruction; difficult to understand, difficult to do - unless you were completely dependent on the leading of a God of both fearless power and fearless love. You better hold fast to that hand.

In the end, even Jesus stood in the snare of lies; mocked and beaten and ‘led as a lamb to the slaughter’. (Isaiah 53:7) But that wasn’t the end of things. He returned from the dead to command those who would follow him to go out into the world. The world which he had just told them was under the power of 'the evil one'. The one that had just tortured him unto death.

“Yeah, let me rush right out,” I am thinking irreverently. If the message had been dependent on me - I am wondering – would it have made it beyond my front door?

The world is a dangerous playground. But God does not shrink back from danger. He sends us out there. He tells us to “go”. Not just to the ‘safe places’ – wherever that is – but he sends us out into the snares and swamps of the enemy.

Honestly, honestly, I do not want to go. I like my comfy world. But lately, there is absolutely no denying that our world is no longer comfy and safe and sanitized for your protection. The curtain has been pulled back, the ticking clock has grown louder, like in that crazy game of Catch Phrase right before the buzzer goes off. I think we are behind enemy lines and time is running out.

What are we to do? I think God unites us and speaks to us through His Word, which is still as true and powerful and cutting sharp as it was the moment it was written. If God was meek and passive, the Israelites would have never made it out of Egypt. If God was only love but not truth, there would never have been a requirement for blood to be shed on a wooden altar.

If God intended his children to sit in comfort and swaddled in safety, he would not have sent His beloved Son, clothed in a skin that bleeds, to a broken and suffering world. If Jesus was only gentle and compassionate, he would not have sent his followers out to die violent deaths in a world that hated them because that world hated Jesus first.

It is a dangerous playground. We are likely to get hurt. Called names. Shoved down by the neighborhood bully. Find ourselves on the ground with palms skinned, knees bleeding. And worse. But we are not alone. There is One who goes before us and walks beside us and protects us from behind. He is One who will not leave us nor forsake us. Would He have said such words of reassurance if He expected us to stay safely behind locked doors?

“Fight,” God said. “The battle is mine.”

“You will have trouble in this world,” Jesus said, “but I have overcome the world.” Roll up your sleeves. Open the door. Go out there and tell the story.

“But I promise you this—the Holy Spirit will come upon you and you will be filled with power. And you will be my messengers to Jerusalem, throughout Judea, the distant provinces — even to the remotest places on earth!” Acts 1:8 TPT

Question: Does God prick your heart when you read His Word? Does His Spirit speak to you to do ‘scary things’? Things that make your palms sweat and cause you to step back in fear? I have found that is how God often speaks to us with something He has for us to do. It is not our idea. We are afraid. It is none of our business. We tell ourselves that we will fail.

Don’t ignore it. Lay it before Him. You just may be headed out onto a dangerous playground.