Big Hand, Big Word

When was the last time you played at a poker table with a straight flush? An online National League of Poker game we played Saturday night had TWO.

The first one brought a player a straight flush on the flop. A "500,000:1 shot," wrote an opponent who had pushed all-in and wound up burned. Now for the second one....

BLINDS: 40/80 (we think)

IN THE POCKET: 8-10 of clubs

We jumped above 3,000 chips (from a starting 1,000) early in the match when a big hand took two players out. Now we're down to about 1,300. But the blinds are relatively small, so we try a call. A few other players join in.

ON THE FLOP: Qc - 8d - Jc

We make bottom pair, but have hopes of much more: straight, flush, or even straight flush. A player ahead of us bets 410 -- about one-third of our stack. But we can't run from these possibilities, so we call.

ON THE TURN: 9c

Wow! The 47-to-one shot (in terms of probability) came in! But the player ahead of us seems unconcerned, and bets 640. This is a rare case where there's no way he can beat us, so with 835 left we push all-in. That opponent calls -- and we frankly don't remember what he had.

ON THE RIVER: 8d.

A straight flush -- and three of a kind besides! "Deja vu," we write.

That nice pot and others gave us our best result yet in the nightly "big game" with $200 in prizes. Out of 841 players who entered, we finished 34th. In terms of weekly championship points, the return was almost 4:1. But only the top four players earned money.

MINISTRY MOMENT: Later in the tournament, we folded a weak small blind hand to a player named "Nightwolf." We joked we were afraid of wolves -- and that led to this exchange:

nightwolf: im scared of me 2
Dealer: nightwolf wins Main Pot ($6300) with Three of a kind, tens
Me: I C Y very good
nightwolf: ty
Dealer: nightwolf wins Main Pot ($4575)
nightwolf: this is y
Me: This is a word.
nightwolf: word is bond
Dealer: DonJuan420 wins Main Pot ($7290)
Me: Bond? James Bond?
Me: A Word once became flesh and dwelt among us.

Nightwolf didn't respond to the last one, as we were moved to a different table. But do you know which "Word" we're talking about?

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." So begins the gospel of John. Our chat exchange referred to a verse shortly after that - John 1:14. Christians believe that Word is none other than....

"Christ Jesus, who.... existed in the form of God.... but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men." (Phil. 2:5-7, NASB) Read all the way to verse 9 to see why Jesus did that.

This "Word" truly is good -- although Jesus said at one point there's none good except the Father (Matt. 19:17). Are you "Word-Up" when it comes to Jesus? And even better, is your life focused upward?