“The King is the most important piece. When he is trapped, his whole army loses. The King can move one square in any direction. The main goal of chess is to checkmate your opponent’s King. The King is not actually captured and removed from the board like other pieces. But if the King is attacked (‘checked’) and threatened with capture, it must get out of check immediately. If there is no way to get out of check, the position is a ‘checkmate,’ and the side that is checkmated loses.”We all know what the game of chess involves. Now there used to be a painting in the Louvre art museum called "Checkmate", painted by Friedrich Moritz August Retzsch. It is now in private hands after being sold at Christie’s in 1999. This painting depicts 2 chess players, one is satan whom appears arrogantly confident, and the other player is a man who looks forlorn. If satan wins, he gets the man's soul.
Written by Dr. Charles Stanley
Happy Father’s Day! Read The Father’s Love Letter, a “letter from God” artfully composed with verses from scripture.
“So he said, “When you pray, say, Father, Reveal who you are. Set the world right. Keep us alive with three square meals. Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others. Keep us safe from ourselves and the Devil.” Luke 11:2-4
God has many names that reveal various facets of His character, such as Creator, King, and Shepherd. But there’s a name that meets one of our greatest human needs in a special way: Father. Each of us was born with a deep desire to be loved unconditionally – so many of our hurts and scars come from this desire never being fully met. What security and wholeness there is in knowing that we can call God “my Father”! Scripture tells us He is “a father to the fatherless” (Psalm 68:5) and that He will never leave us, even if our earthly parents abandon us. (Psalm 27:10)
At 87, the Rev. C.T. Vivian can still recall the moment, decades after the height of the civil rights movement.
As he stood to conclude a meeting in his Atlanta home, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. joined his activist colleagues in song, his eyes closed, rocking back and forth on his heels.
“There is a balm in Gilead,” they sang, “to make the wounded whole.”
As the nation pauses Monday (Jan. 16) to mark King’s birthday, those who knew him say hymns, spirituals and other religious songs helped carry him through troubled times.
The spiritual fit King’s unique circumstances, said Vivian, who recently was named vice president of the SouthernChristian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization co-founded by King.
“The average Christian doesn’t have to pick up his phone when it rings and think about somebody killing him or his children,” said Vivian. “The average Christian didn’t have any of that.”
