JohnnyBGamer

At the Table – Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative board game that requires players to take on different roles/coordinate their moves in an effect to treat infections/find cures for four different viruses. At the end of each player turn, cards are drawn which cause the viruses to spread even further. Will solid teamwork win the day?

Years ago, Tab and I had a bad experience with Pandemic. For an entire game, we were told what to do:

“Use your special move to do this.”

“You should move here to stop the yellow virus from spreading.”

Instead of being allowed to wrap our head around the game’s unique mechanics, we were compelled to be good soldiers and follow orders. This experience made Tab and I never want to play Pandemic again… and so we didn’t. We avoided the game like the plague.

Side Note: Our experience, I later found out, was not unique. In the board game world it even has a term: “Quarterbacking”. Quarterbacking occurs in cooperative board games when one player dominates the group by telling everyone else how to play.

Pandemic — *Behold, the board! And the many virus cubes of evil.*

Last year, one of my big pushes was to introduce cooperative board gaming to our family. I wanted less of us all working against each other and more of us working together to overcome the board. So we played a bunch of cooperative games such as:

Castle Panic
Forbidden Island
Jaws
The Mind
The Game Card Game

*From our recent family playthrough of Jaws.*

For Christmas, I decided to ask for Pandemic. I thought maybe playing the game with just Tab and Wyatt might redeem Pandemic in the Hall house. I was right! We had a great time stumbling across the board, as we tried to figure out exactly how everything worked. By the time the world was imploding with viruses, we lost the game. But even in our defeat, we are all eager to play Pandemic again.

Final Thoughts: Castle Panic is our favorite family cooperative game right now. We love the way it plays. However, Pandemic isn’t too shabby. Funny how one bad experience soured the game for us. I am happy to have brought Pandemic back to the table for another go.

From Across the Net – “Crew Dragon Launch Escape Demonstration”

This is so awesome!

From Across the Net – “Coronavirus: Photos From Wuhan Under Quarantine”

Though these photos are a few days old now, they still show a scene many of us have only seen in movies. The Chinese city of Wuhan looks like a ghost town due to the Coronavirus quarantine. The photo of the super market, the way it stretches out (the market looks huge, almost as if a mirror is making it look bigger), is but a glimpse of a much different culture. Yet life goes on, and residents exercise in the street (see photo in slideshow linked below).

Check out the photos here

Change My Default Setting

While reading this morning, I caught this towards the end of Galatians 1:

21 After that visit I went north into the provinces of Syria and Cilicia. 22 And still the churches in Christ that are in Judea didn’t know me personally. 23 All they knew was that people were saying, “The one who used to persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried to destroy!” 24 And they praised God because of me.

We live in a culture that is skeptical. Daily, we are bombarded with news cycles which are hyped-up and presented as entertainment. In our communities, we bump into the super skeptical–the Moon landing never happened!–. We live in a time where our discernment muscles are worked to a fatigue. This causes many of us to be swept along with the cultural tide, bobbing along the surface of noise.

If our world is skeptical, Christian culture can even be more so. I think back, a few months ago, to Kanye West’s “supposed” conversion. Twitter was a mess with Christians initially calling his new relationship with Christ false. How many times have we done that ourselves with those in our own churches? I am not calling for blind acceptance here, we need to be wise. But I can’t imagine how our modern Christian culture would react to someone like the Apostle Paul. The churches in Christ that were in Judea behaved this way (verses 23-24):

23 All they knew was that people were saying, “The one who used to persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried to destroy!” 24 And they praised God because of me.

Which makes me ask:

Do we praise God when we hear about a brother or sister coming to Christ?
Is our first reaction one where we are skeptical? Taking a “we’ll just see how this turns out” approach?

Personally, I want to react with awe and wonder at what God has done and is doing. I am not 100% there yet though. Being honest, I am skeptical most of the time. Nevertheless, I want God to change my default setting.

Simple Accountability

I stepped out of my comfort zone Sunday morning. Normally, I teach adults during the Sunday School hour at church. But yesterday, I went and joined a 9th-12th grade boys class.

My friend Jon, who I used to co-teach with, leads this group of guys. He opened with the question:

“What did you read in your Bibles this week?”

The room was silent, awkwardly silent. Jon asked again, his question hanging in the air:

“What did you read in your Bibles this week?”

The silence broke as one of the guys talked about what he was reading in the Book of Revelation; another talked about reading in the Gospel of Mark.

We discussed other things, but our opening question stuck with me. Got me thinking about what would happen if I asked this question in an adult Sunday School group. What would the answers be like? Do we expect to be asked such a question by a fellow believer?

I think that often we can put up a good front. We can demonstrate that we know a lot about Jesus and the Bible. The difference between knowing and growing; the difference between reading your Bible and praying on a daily basis is huge.

I want to grow closer to Jesus. I want to be able to give an answer about what I’ve read on a given day… about what He is doing in my life. Accountability starts with a simple question: Are we willing to ask?