Yahtzee

“It’s hard to paint a picture of a whale when you’re still trapped in the belly.”

***

If you’ve ever played Yahtzee then you can attest to the indescribable feeling of having five dice all land on the same number in the scope of three rolls. Since 1956 people have been playing this game of luck and strategy and rolling in laughter. My family has been playing ever since my memory has been intact. We’ve played it across the States during camping trips and without fail Yahtzee always makes an appearance when family members come together.

Perhaps the biggest contributor to this being a family tradition was my grandmother. Gram, as my brother and I called her, had an uncanny ability to get all five dice to land on the same number at least once in nearly every game we played. What was just as astonishing was her surprise at rolling a yahtzee. She would wonder aloud how it happened, laugh, and inevitably roll another one before the night was through. My wife uses Yahtzee with her Pre-Calculus class to work out different formulas of probability. As her students have discovered, rolling a yahtzee in every game is nothing short of remarkably amazing. As was Gram.

Most worldviews will attest to the importance of luck and strategy within their philosophy. Perhaps this is why Yahtzee is still so popular nearly 60 years after its inception. Resigned to a significant amount of chance controlling your game play, absolved of accountability, yet holding out for all of the dice to align themselves just so in order to find gratification. I suppose it feels good to believe that a strategy of throwing the dice can lead to your own fulfillment. A view that it all rests on fate.

My grandparents, Gram and Gramp, while enjoying the simple game of Yahtzee, certainly did not live their lives in a throw the dice fatalistic manner. In fact the last words Gram ever spoke to my father, just days before her 102nd birthday, clearly attest to their game strategy, “God is great. God is good.”

Another strategic aspect to their worldview is one founded steadfastly to a cornerstone of freedom. My grandparents lived a legacy of hope built upon the cornerstone of Jesus Christ. With this foundation they knew that their hope would withstand hardship. Their hope did not change based upon circumstances. Hope with a clear purpose and end game. Hope that outplays fate on every turn.

And their hope has outlived them. It started in the past, sustained them in the present, and carried them into the future.

***

“Now your burden’s lifted

And carried far away

And precious blood has washed the stain away, so

…Sing to Jesus and live.”

Living a life full (full house)

“And when the love spills over

And music fills the night

And when you can’t contain your joy inside, then

…Dance for Jesus and live.”

“Untitled Hymn” by Chris Rice

Normalis

 

Darkness still hangs upon each and every object, but the appointed hour has finally arrived. Electricity courses through the veins making this early hour possible for the weary. Wake the boys, kiss the dog goodbye, it’s off to the airport we go!

I find it disturbingly enjoyable leaving a place as a light drizzle covers your world. When departures are never simple, it makes the goodbye easier to swallow. Perhaps it hurts less, or possibly it’s just one more perceived protection of the heart.

Traffic was as good as is realistically possible for Nairobi, Kenya on a Saturday morning and in spite of the gloom our spirits began to rise. As our van snaked through traffic to the hum-bump of the windshield wipers, safe arrival looked more than a possibility. Then as so often happens, traffic slowed and the inevitable congested bottle up began. In situations such as this the brain goes into overdrive in speculative attempts of comprehension. Questions of what and why begin dancing through the mind until… oh yes. Palpable understanding.

Approximately two kilometers outside of the airport, in the middle of the  new highway, passenger buses, vans, trucks, and cars jockey for position to be closest to the latest innovative security check. Amidst the vehicular movement all passengers are required, thus the scurry across lanes of traffic, to get to the side of the highway in order to undergo their own pat-down. Mothers carrying children, bewildered tourists standing in a sea of movement, and men scattering and edging for place while lone drivers continued their drive forward. A resemblance of control could be seen if one looked intently. In moments like these I’m so thankful that the boys see being patted down by men with assault rifles as normal.

Surviving the police check the scene turned from controlled chaos to something out of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Like wildebeest massing on the riverside eyeing the crocodile a short distance away, yet still jumping out into the dangerous waters, people rushed out in front of moving traffic to locate their drivers and speed off to the airport. Hour one of our journey nearly complete.

* Penned inside of JKIA Nairobi, Kenya after a second delay of flight caused small children to turn to moths and other insects discovered in the terminal as play things.

 

Life in the Time of Cholera

“People aren’t against you, they are for themselves.”

Passion is such a loaded emotion. On one hand it can conquer the most aggressive case of apathy while on the other hand it can send you blindly to your death. With the right purpose it will propel change for a better world.  Misguided and misled it will tear the world apart. Recently I had the opportunity to discuss with three young men the general topic of purpose in life. Perhaps not the most riveting topic for young teenagers, but there we were.

Reaching into my pocket I pulled out my key chain to reveal a coin from a previous country I had lived in. Although the coin is of no monetary value to me where I currently live, it is kept as a physical reminder of a valuable lesson once learned. In showing the coin, one of the students politely asked its origin. When told, his polite demeanor abruptly switched to passive aggressive mode as he sneered a single comment dripping with attitude. He seemed to loathe the fact that the coin came from a country that was traditionally his own country’s rival. Now I have lived in both countries for almost as long as he has been alive and seen anger and outrage towards each other. I know the past is not something easily reconciled. Pain lingers. However, this young man has not lived in the place of his ethnicity long enough to have seen any of this first hand. On the flip side, he has also not lived there long enough to see the rise of reconciliation between the two cultures. In spite of the multicultural locations he has lived prior to our meeting, he appears to have been spoon fed negative stereotypes, unhealthy grievances, and lists of wrongdoings in addition to partial knowledge of past wars and attempts of conquest. Holding fast to the biased sword of prejudice, reconciliation and restoration have no place in his lexicon.

Such were my thoughts as I attempted to regain momentum by putting the coin back in my pocket and continuing on with the two other boys who were still keenly interested in my story. I’m glad this young man is not living out a hundred years of solitude and stuck in a completely self-absorbed frame of living. Yet connecting with a passive aggressive boy who refuses to let go of second-hand hatred about finding a lasting, and freeing, purpose for living is not something I wanted to ignore.

Certainly we live in times of injustice with a plethora of opportunities for passion. There are outbreaks of cholera throughout Kenya right now. Malnourishment and malaria knock on so many doors. Children can be seen begging on the streets for money to go to school while others beg for money to sniff glue. People are calling out for merciless punishment while others cry out for forgiveness. And of course there are those passionately grabbing hold of past pains and anger in order to find a jaded purpose for future life. There are things that compel us to speak out. Too much is at stake to allow silence or apathy to guide our way. Ironically enough, the coin I spoke of, with its shiny gold exterior, is empty in the middle which is exactly what happens when you lack a purpose grounded in the absolute and sustaining Truth of Jesus Christ.