God Plays Board Games

I love Risk.

Around New Year's my Dad, brother, and I belly up to the dining room table and grapple for world conquest. The essence of the game is fairly simple: populate your countries with your little green or blue or red men and bully the other guys out of the way until the world is awash in a sea of your army's color. It takes a tortuously long time (which is why we play it once a year) but it's worth it.

There's just one catch: the dice.

The game is not won by sheer force. There is strategy, yes, and numbers certainly help. But the outcome on the battlefield is determined ultimately by who can roll the highest numbers. If you roll a string of sixes, your one plastic troop can stand down a whole fleet of military muscle.

It's all about the dice.

Which is why a text like Proverbs 16:33 becomes very real to me when I play: "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord."

God determines who wins Risk. I roll the dice, the natural laws of gravity and friction take their course, and yet -- in and through the flick of my wrist and the pull of the earth -- God decides what I will roll.

I love that God governs galaxies as well as golf balls, kings as well as ketchup bottles, hurricanes as well as hamsters......

and battleships as well as board games.