• There might even be spiritual lessons to learn from the game •
[2 MIN READ]
Apparently, I wear out on my sleeve the fact that I play Wordle: “Calvin, you look like you play, right? How did you do today?” This made game playing a casual point of Arcadia Christian Fellowship engagement as that student and I started exchanging our results via text messaging. One day, she shared hers with an apology: She looked up the answer for the 6th guess. She didn’t want to ruin her record. The fact is that she had also lost just the day before. Sure, you can ruin your record by failing 2 days in a row, but by how much?
In case you haven’t tried it yet: Wordle (The New York Times)
The process of finding other Wordle players led to another student learning about a particularly lucky 2-guess effort I had. Nailing 3 perfect letters with my first guess helped. The odds were in my favor for the second guess, too, because there were 4 possible options there. Second Student begged to know what my 3 perfect letters were. He wanted to be able to shoot for the answer in 1. Wait, exactly how authentic a one-shot effort would that have been?
They both laughed about each other’s ambitions, but it got me thinking about the ways we, as God’s chosen people, want Him to grow us — just on our own terms.
Passages like Hebrews 12:5 come to mind: “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” (ESV). And John 16:33: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
Taking shortcuts in Wordle might seem like a humble example of yielding to temptation to avoid unpleasantness or of dealing with difficult circumstances in order to grow, but for some people, shortcuts for a simple game could be the tip of the iceberg: “One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much” (Luke 16:10).
Share this post with someone you want to know more about ACF and its support by CCO (Calvin’s website).
For my part, I’ve come to accept that I will never have a perfect record for solving Wordle — I’m just bad at seeing possible word options — but I’ve also learned to accept the hard lessons of bigger challenges because “…we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Since believing Christians do love God and are called according to his purpose, it’s possible to learn from the small, even a Wordle game, to be ready for the big.
FINE PRINT [CCOmmentary #4 for 2025’10’03’F] ¶Text: Calvin Wang (Wäng), CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
Go up one level
iCandybyWangC 