Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Mario and God--what they have to do with each other

It's been a while, hasn't it?

It feels quite pleasant to write about this again. For a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is all the other writing I've focused on.

In the last level of the newest Super Mario Brothers for the Wii, just before you fight the very large and imposing Bowser, you hop into this chamber of slowly sinking lava. You stand on this platform that sinks faster than the lava does, dragging you down in the goopy orange that makes Mario shout "oh no" and Luigi yell "ow ow ow" before sealing your fate in failure. Just before your platform sinks into the lava, a new platform appears. The lava keeps sinking and you keep moving down the chamber that way, trying to find a new platform before your current one sinks into the fire. (It reminds me of a scene I wrote in a book, actually.)

I realized midway the key to the level was faith. If you wanted to live, you had to jump in the air towards the area still covered with lava, believing that the game creators had put a platform there that would emerge from the orange death-trap before you landed in it. It became easy to guess where they'd put the platforms just based on the distance between previous platforms, but you never actually know where you'll land until you land.

God has treated me like those game creators treat us lately. It's lava, and I have no idea where to land. But I knew that the game creators didn't make an impossible game. There had to be another platform in that chamber SOMEWHERE, and I sure as the lake of fire couldn't keep standing on the same platform, so I had to jump.

I guess I just have to trust that God didn't make an impossible game, and that as I step forward into craziness, there's going to be a place to land.

I'll try to remember that next time I'm on a sinking platform in a chamber of lava.

No comments:

Post a Comment