{"id":4429,"date":"2025-02-21T07:55:44","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T12:55:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4429"},"modified":"2025-02-21T07:55:44","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T12:55:44","slug":"checkmate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/21\/checkmate\/","title":{"rendered":"Checkmate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

If you\u2019re a chess player, you have probably experienced something of the despair depicted in this painting.

The young man on the right is contemplating chess catastrophe.\u00a0

His remaining pieces are surrounded.\u00a0His opponent appears to have just captured his queen.

But there\u2019s a good deal more happening here than first meets the eye.

The painting, by the German artist Friederich August Moritz Retzsch (1779-1857), is officially known as The Chess Players.<\/em>\u00a0But it is commonly called Checkmate.<\/em>

Retzsch was fascinated by Goethe\u2019s Faust<\/em>, the classic story of a physician who, bored with life and yearning for adventure, sells his soul to the devil. Such deals, at first, are inevitably more exciting than spending weekends watching reruns of Law and Order<\/em>.

But selling one\u2019s soul never has a happy ending.\u00a0\u00a0

Retzsch has captured the moment when Mephistopheles (Satan), the jaunty fellow with the red feather in his cap, is closing in for the kill.\u00a0

The chessboard is on the flat slab of a tomb.\u00a0Note the large spider in the foreground.\u00a0The young man\u2019s pieces represent the virtues of a righteous life.\u00a0Satan\u2019s chess pieces symbolize temptations.\u00a0The latter are definitely mopping up the former.\u00a0

An angel looks on forlornly, reflecting the hopelessness of the situation.\u00a0

In 1861, Rev. R.R. Harrison of Richmond, Virginia, hosted a dinner party in which Checkmate <\/em>played a starring role.

Harrison had gathered the local Chess Association for an evening\u2019s entertainment.\u00a0One of the guests who happened to be in town was Paul Morphy, a chess prodigy who is still regarded by many as one of the 10 finest masters ever to play the game.\u00a0

Harrison, who owned an engraving of Checkmate<\/em>, had decided to recreate the positions of all the pieces in Retzsch\u2019s painting on his own chessboard.\u00a0

He later wrote, \u201cI had regarded the young man\u2019s game as hopeless.\u201d\u00a0

Morphy, however, was more optimistic.\u00a0Sitting at Harrison\u2019s chessboard, he took over the young man\u2019s remaining pieces in their current positions.\u00a0Before the end of the evening he had beaten all the other guests, one at a time, each of whom had assumed the devil\u2019s huge advantage.

Checkmate averted.<\/em>

Your situation may also look hopeless.\u00a0

You may have misplayed your vocational opportunities, train-wrecked your relationships, and surrendered to temptations you never saw coming.

But you\u2019re not facing those circumstances alone. Here\u2019s how the apostle Paul wraps up his letter to the church at Rome: \u201cThe God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet\u201d (Romans 16:20).

If you let a master direct the pieces on the board of your life, your game isn\u2019t over yet.\u00a0

Fortunately, just such a Master is available.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here If you\u2019re a chess player, you have probably experienced something of the despair depicted in this painting. The young man on the right is contemplating chess catastrophe.\u00a0 His remaining pieces are surrounded.\u00a0His opponent appears to have just captured his queen. But there\u2019s a good deal more happening here than first meets… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[351],"class_list":["post-4429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-providence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4431,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4429\/revisions\/4431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}