This is Faith in Play #80: Synchronized, for July 2024.
About two years ago we posted Faith in Play #53: Synchronicity. This is a related but distinct notion.
Now four decades ago when I was a DJ on one of the then few contemporary Christian radio stations in the world I noticed something peculiar. Fairly frequently there would be several new songs reflecting the same theme–one that comes to mind was an abrupt rash of songs about facing the battle. At the time Christian music came from three primary disparate sources, California where musicians tended to work together, Nashville where they knew each other but worked independently, and Texas where it wasn’t clear that they were at all connected. There didn’t seem to be any reasonable way for these musicians to be copying each other, given that their records were released nearly simultaneously.
I have noticed the same oddity in the music played on my local radio stations: the same ideas are expressed at the same time by several different bands.
There might be many explanations for this, but the one I suspect is that God is delivering the same lessons, the same message, to many of His people in many places at the same time.
In my Multiverser novels one of the characters, Robert Slade, believes that his god, Odin, is preparing him for Ragnorak by bringing him to places where he can hone his skills for battle. He usually finds a conflict that fits that (although Joseph Kondor insists that anywhere you go you can find such a conflict, and it proves nothing). Slade further believes that if other versers arrive in the same place and time, it’s going to be a big battle that needs all of them. Usually he’s right.
Of course, that’s the realm of fiction, and he’s right because I’m creating the story and was looking for ways to make an interesting story that involved all the characters including this ultimate warrior. But I suspect it’s that way in life, too: God brings people together who need to work together on whatever task He has decided to address, whatever battle He is fighting in the here and now. It could be forming an organization to feed and house the homeless, or an evangelistic front to reach the lost, or a prison reform movement to help the incarcerated. The people needed for His work are drawn to each other and make the necessary connection to get the job done.
I’m thinking that we can do this in our games. A blatant example is that when the player character party stumbles into a situation in which they are clearly overmatched–a dragon, an orc army, a space pirate base–they also encounter another party, a group of non-player characters, who have come seeking to deal with this exact evil. The coincidence occurs because God has everything in his timing–as another character in the novels, Brian Cooper, frequently says, “We are in sovereign hands.” There’s no reason God can’t maneuver events to bring people together.
There’s also no reason He can’t do the same with events. It is said that Columbus was saved by the fact he knew a lunar eclipse was about to occur and was able to credit it to his God. Quite natural events can always be brought to the aid of the players at just the right time–and the skillful referee can so order his backstory such that it appears to be a perfectly useful coincidence.
If indeed God has got the whole world in His hands, we should expect these things.
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