Challenge Me

Winning against all odds

     I do a short exercise routine in the morning. When I’ve finished, to cool down and catch my breath, I play a game of double-decker solitaire. It starts with twenty-one cards laid out on the table face up, with some of them overlapping. All the rest, all eighty-three, are in the deck, which I turn over one at a time. In a good game I play lots of cards on the layout, and the stack that I’ve turned over from the deck remains small. But in a difficult game that stack builds up. I can get a pretty good idea of my odds of winning based on its depth.

    At first I think that the best games are the ones where I win easily. Everything falls into place. Turn over a card, play it on the layout, turn over the next one. If the stack builds up to more than five or six cards, that’s bad. But lately I’ve noticed something unexpected. I’ve had several games where I was sure I would lose. Twenty or thirty or more cards are in that stack, and there’s just no way that I’ll ever be able to use them all and win the game.

    And then it happens. I turn over just the right card. Six, seven, eight more cards can be played. Turn over another. Put that one in place, too. The layout’s changed enough to allow me to use the next eight, ten, twelve cards in the stack. Turn over a few more, play a dozen more. Suddenly, the game is winnable. Against all hope, it reaches the point where I know I will succeed.

Finding pleasure in the struggle

    Two observations. First, it feels so good to win when I think the situation is hopeless. Better than when I pull it off with no trouble. I don’t particularly like this lesson. I’d rather have a life where everything is easy, I always come out on top, and it’s deeply satisfying. Isn’t that the ideal?

    Instead, I find that the easy wins are less fulfilling and less memorable. I guess that’s the way it works in real life, too. When something takes little effort, I value it less and forget it sooner. Maybe that’s one reason why God allows so much suffering. If I didn’t suffer, if all of life was a snap, I’d actually get less enjoyment out of it. It sounds so backwards.

    This analogy brings me one step closer to being able to understand James’s advice to “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2). I’ve always wrestled with this verse. Joy in trials? But I’ve just found a little happiness in the small struggle to win a game of solitaire against all odds. There is delight, there is satisfaction, there is pleasure in overcoming. Without the trial of a difficult setup in the game, I wouldn’t experience the joy.

Dealing with doubts

    Second observation: As I’m turning the cards over, I’m automatically weighing my chances of winning. Sometimes I get to a point where I’m absolutely certain I can’t possibly succeed. A few key cards are buried deep in the stack. I’ll never be able to work my way back down to them. It would take a miracle. And then the miracle occurs. I manage to play enough cards to get to those most important ones. The impossible is gradually transformed into the maybe and then into the yes!

    How often does this reflect my attitude toward God’s hand in my life? How often, in the midst of suffering, do I look at all the obstacles in the way and assume that the solution that I’m longing for is impossible? That the prayer that I’m praying will never be answered the way I want it to be? That God can’t turn around an obviously losing hand and bring me out with a win? Too often.

    When things have gone badly for so long, when suffering has been piled on suffering, when I can’t imagine even one more thing going wrong but then it does, what happens to my faith and hope? I weigh the potential outcomes in the balance and I know that God can’t, or won’t, make it any better. It’s impossible.

    I need this analogy of the cards. I need this reminder that when everything looks hopeless from my perspective, with God there is still hope. If it can happen in a simple, meaningless, unimportant game of cards, it can happen with the God of creation, the God of salvation, the God who is love (1 John 4:8 and 16). Every time I win an “impossible” game, I thank Him for the pleasure of overcoming in a seemingly hopeless situation. For the taste of the even greater joys ahead as I anticipate His surprising me with an unexpected solution to my insurmountable problems. And for challenging me.