Have you ever played Jenga? It’s one of my favorites. If you’ve never played you start with a sturdy tower of blocks and then turn by turn you remove one of those blocks from the lower levels and place that block on the top – trying to see just how tall you can get your block building before it falls. Crash! Big Ba-da- BOOM.
And then we put the puzzle back together to play again or to put it away for another day. Jenga isn’t about adding more blocks to the tower or taking them away without using them. It’s about using what’s there and exploring how to use it. Our word of the month reminds me of Jenga. This month we’re asking what does it mean to be a people of integrity. It stems from the Latin word ‘interger’ which means whole and complete. To be a people of integrity means we need to have wholeness. To be the solid Jenga form at the beginning and the end of the game. To have integrity is to watch how your actions affect you and those around you – is your jenga tower wobbling or is it solid? When do you need to put a piece back? When do you need to pull a piece out and go out on a limb?