When the Game is Over It All Goes Back in the Box

This book by John Ortberg is a powerful and practical exploration of how to maintain our most meaningful perspectives in a Christian life - the eternal. He uses the metaphor of a board game, in which struggling too hard to win is rendered pointless as the game draws to a conclusion and (well, you know the title), and the whole book is structured around this metaphor - with concepts like main rules, being master of the board, getting on with other players, playing fairly, respecting chance, winning the 'inner' game, taking turns properly, understanding priorities, etc acting as springboards for each chapter to build on the same aggregate extended metaphor, and though it might sound like it gets irritating and repetitive Ortberg is a skilled enough writer to couch each reminder in the slowly-updating stream of ideas, and the whole book acts as a deep and powerful series of steps building an extremely well-developed and insightful collection of wise at the things we make life into games of and how such tendencies can be seen, mitigated, and resisted. It's a book that is enjoyable and accessible but, as any gospel-centred book on Christian life should be, is thoroughly uncomfortable at times, because it's written transparently and flexibly enough that readers will be bringing to mind their own struggles on game-boards as they work through each chapter, and confronting places in which we are failing to live our lives truly for the sake of Christ and are desperately still trying to win personal stakes in Monopoly or whatever is never a cosy process - but it does lead us to grace, and so even if we're losing a particular game we can look fondly to the orchestrator knowing that once all the pieces have been boxed away and all is forgotten, we haven't really lost anything, as they we are with them. I don't know, that was a very clumsy sentence, I feel like. It's late and I've had a long week. This book is highly recommended for Christian readers wanting to develop eternal perspectives; it's original, makes practical hints about mindset and attitude, and is biblically-grounded all the way through (although on surface level it may seem to hinge more upon the extended metaphor, this is always merely a springboard into proper discussion of scriptural truth).