Tip of My Iceberg

              photo property of Dayle Rogers

When you have a nine-year-old and six-year-old boys able to rally a group of teenaged girls to play a game that none of them are really familiar with, it’s quite an accomplishment. I can chalk it up to the adorable natures and over all cuteness of these boys, which are significant reasons. Ryken and Cal’s mom has been the coach for these young ladies, and the love and respect they have for her has seeped into these little dudes.

What they challenged the girls to play was “Among Us”. It’s an online multiplayer social deduction game inspired by the party game “Mafia” plus the science fiction horror film, “The Thing”. Developed by the gaming studio Innersloth, it didn’t really find a following till Covid when YouTubers began playing it online.

This is where my grands discovered it, and they’ve been quite passionate about it. The players take on one of two different roles–Crewmates, who try to stay alive, and Imposters, who try to kill the Crewmates. The object is to identify the Imposters before they can get to you.

This has become a family and friends game with our grands. They gather people–like these very agreeable teen girls–and each player fills a role. Just like in the game “Mafia”, the “bad guys” try to eliminate the “good guys” before they’re identified for who they really are.

It’s fun to watch the game progress as each group is trying to figure out who’s who. This has grabbed the boys imaginations, and the live action game is so much more enjoyable than having them glued to a screen. Cal, at six, delights in the game so much that he requested an Among Us cake for his birthday. I obliged. But it was covered in homemade fondant–and that will never happen again.

               photo property of Dayle Rogers

We all love a good game we can become immersed in, one that makes us think, laugh, and look forward to when we can gather with friends again.

It’s also a picture of the dark that can surround us, the enemies of our hearts and minds that can undermine who we are. We all have Imposters in our lives, those who try to fool us to believe or do what they think is the right way, not giving us space to think for ourselves.

And we’ve been the Imposters.

There was a prophet named Elisha who, having heard from God, warned the king of Israel how how the king of Aram would attack his land. This preparation caused Israel to continually thwart all the attacks against their country. The king of Aram was so frustrated, he asked how Israel could always be prepared for their attacks. His spies told him Elisha the prophet was to blame for their continual defeat.

The king of Aram decided to send troops against Elisha to destroy him.

“When the servant of the man of God got up early the next morning and went outside, there were troops, horses, and chariots everywhere. ‘Oh, sir, what will we do now?’ the young man cried to Elisha. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ Elisha told him. ‘for there are more on our side than on theirs!’ Then Elisha prayed, ‘O Lord, open his eyes and let him see!’ The Lord opened the young man’s eyes, and when he looked up, he saw that the hillside around Elisha was filled with horses and chariots of fire.’”

The armies of God surrounded Elisha, his servant, and all the armies of Aram. Elisha led the army to Israel as prisoners without a sword being lifted or an arrow shot. When they arrived, the king of Israel asked how he should kill them, but Elisha urged him to feed their prisoners and send them home.

Imposters? These men were trying to obey their king and encountered forces greater and more powerful than they were–the army of God. They’d been led to believe they could take this lowly prophet and weren’t prepared for the surprise of Elisha’s “crewmates”.

Ryken and Cal enjoy a game that allows them to defeat an enemy, a desire I believe each of us holds close to our hearts. We want to be the hero in our stories, but we’re too often surrounded by the imposters that seek to undermine our hope. The lies, the deceptions, the pain that life brings.

God is our help, the One who provides us victory in times of hardship, the One who is our Rock when life seems to be slipping out from under us.

This is no game.

But there are winners.