Boggle is the Church?

My roommate hates Boggle. The time limit stresses her out, and we are both *slightly competitive people, so she doesn’t enjoy the 90 seconds or so of word-hunt. I love Boggle. Boggle has to be one of the best games ever made. If you’ve never played it, it may seem slightly simplistic; but it is incredibly fun, and it is a picture of the kingdom of God.

Boggle is a game where 16 dice with letters on each side are jumbled around in a plastic box and then arranged (however they happen to fall) in a 4-sided grid. Your mission is to construct as many words as possible within the time limit using the dice; the catch is that the dice you use to make the words must be touching. The words you create which your opponents do not count as points for you.

At the end of a round, one player reads their list out loud, often to the amazement, frustration, and amusement of the other players. It is ridiculous how many words are there to be discovered. You can often spend the last 30 seconds of a round searching the board for anything you might have missed- staring and trying your hardest to see new words. But you rarely (if ever) find them all.

I realized at the end of the third round today why I love this game. It is reflective both of the beauty of community we get to share in through Jesus presently, and the hope we live in that all will be revealed and made perfect one day in heaven. We each see different words in the puzzle set before us, just as we each see and experience different aspects of the Lord in relationship with Him. We all bring these experiences to the table, and we get to discover even more of how loving, dynamic, beautiful, and good He is. The end of the round is fantastic because you can’t believe that there are any more words to find- and yet, voila! Through the sharing in community, you discover brilliant words you just couldn’t see! And even as you sit with your fellow word-hunters after having gone through your lists, sometimes you happen to uncover several other words you’ve all missed.

I enjoy the game most when I am not in cut-throat competition mode, focused solely on the task of finding words to win (which is a special place for me, if you are aware of my competitive inclinations). I love the anticipation that comes with knowing that others are going to offer up some ridiculously clever finds which make me appreciate that there is always more to discover. I love that we get to bring our finds together to see the puzzle more comprehensively. I love that only God knows all of the words which might be extractable from that crazy concoction of letters, and I love that I’ll one day sit with Him as He shows them to me. (Although I’m not so sure Boggle will be on my mind at that point…)