Frogger

I seriously doubt any of my professors played video games on their computers when they were trying to decompress on something. But here I am playing the old Frogger video game as I wind down a bit from lecture writing. For those who do not remember, Frogger was the game where you had to get a frog across a busy street, then across a river in which, oddly, things moved in alternating directions, until eventually landing it safely at home at the top of the screen. You completed the level when you successfully guided five frogs around the obstacles to their homes. At that point, the obstacles became trickier--the cars became more numerous and moved more quickly, and the number and speed of the things floating down the alternating-current river changed as well. This is not to mention the addition of a few moving obstacles like otters, snakes and alligators that just loved to munch on computer-generated frogs.

Anyhow, at the beginning of each level, the machine played a short musical piece, and on every level but the first your frog didn't appear until after it was over. The frog appeared actually quite early in the opening number, so this soon meant that one of the marks of a champion Frogger player was the ability to navigate the first frog home before the music ended. When I was young playing the actual game in an arcade I was only able to do this maybe once or twice in ten tries (much to the chagrin of my parents when they discovered I'd spent that many quarters). But I am able to do that now, at least on this version in the computer.

Where was I going with that?

In the faculty prayer meeting today, I shared about how in the whirlwind tour to get me here things always seemed to work out exactly when they were supposed to, sometimes even miraculously, and I thought that I should feel confident that the things still left in the air (like my shipment), and about which I am worried, will also get worked out when they need to. But in the process I often felt like I was playing Frogger, navigating the various obstacles and trying not to get myself smooshed or drowned in the process of doing something for which I was not at all prepared, emotionally, physically, mentally, or spiritually. But, the promise-making God is the promise-keeping God. This is made clear all throughout the Old and New Testaments, not to mention the history of Christianity. Why should it be any different now?