The Chess Game of Life: Strategy and the Unseen Hand

Last week, I had a wonderful time playing chess with my son. As we moved our pieces across the board, contemplating attacks and defenses, I found myself thinking about how much chess mirrors life itself.

In chess, as in life, we must strategize. We need to understand what resources we have at our disposal, our knights and bishops, our strengths and limitations. We study the board, anticipate our opponent’s moves, and plan several steps ahead. Action and reaction. Cause and effect. It’s all so scientific, so formulaic. There’s comfort in that predictability, in knowing that if we think carefully enough, plan thoroughly enough, we can navigate toward victory.

But here’s what struck me as we played, there’s something more.

Life isn’t only the pieces we can see and the moves we can calculate. There’s an unseen element too, something that defies the formula. Sometimes, just when we think we’ve planned it all out, an unexpected opportunity appears. A door opens that we didn’t know existed. A connection forms that we couldn’t have engineered. Our piece moves in a way we hadn’t imagined possible.

I’ve learned to play chess the best I can, to think ahead, to be strategic, to understand the patterns. But I’ve also learned to make room for that unseen hand that guides the playing board. The one that occasionally moves our piece for us, creating opportunities we never could have planned.

As I sit down to write my life, I carry this wisdom with me. I’ll bring my best thinking, my careful planning, my understanding of craft. But I’ll also leave space for that mysterious, God guidance, for the moments when the words flow from somewhere beyond my conscious strategy, when the story reveals something I didn’t know I knew.

May that hand guide me. May it guide us all as we navigate our own lives, making our careful moves while staying open to grace.

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After all, the best games, the best lives, are played with both skill and surrender.