Scrabble Goes Spiritual

“If God was sitting here in the room with you right now, what game would the two of you play?” Judy asked.

The question startled me. God plays games? I almost dismissed it as frivolous but for my respect for Judy. I was sitting in a roomful of women at a Christmas party and Judy was explaining and demonstrating “Listening Prayer.”

“What game do you wanna play God?” I asked, closing my eyes and waiting. I expected silence or, at best, static on the airwaves.

“Scrabble.” The word instantly appeared on my spiritual radar. What else? It’s the only game I ever play. Was this God or “the obvious”? If  I had heard something like Bridge or Chess I would have known it wasn’t God since I’m not smart enough for either of those games!

“Now ask God why He wants to play that game with you,” Judy coached.

Still skeptical, I closed my eyes and asked why.

I was shocked by the answer. “I sure hope that was You, God!” I thought. “Because I like what I heard.”

Judy began to ask volunteers to reveal their games and answers. Women reported hearing games like Tag and Red Rover and in every case their “why” had a beautiful positive answer — something as surprising to them as my answer had been to me.

One woman said that her game was the game she played with all her children when they were toddlers. They would sit on the floor facing each other with a gap of a few feet between them. With their legs in a V, they would roll a ball back and forth. She said that when she asked God why that game His answer was: “The ball is all your troubles and worries (her husband has been unable to work for two years due to chronic fatigue). When you roll the ball to Me, it is huge. But when I roll it back to you it is much smaller because I have lightened the load.”

I had not planned to speak up until I heard other women’s stories. Their sharing convinced me that what I had heard was true even though it had seemed too good to be true.

“When I asked God why He chose Scrabble,” I said, “His answer was so unexpected, so tender, it caught me by surprise. My first thought was, ‘I sure hope this is You, God, because I really like this answer.'”

Everyone was listening.

“He said, ‘I chose Scrabble so I can spell out just how much I love you.'”