Stronghold Crusader, Economics and Sunrises

Growing up, we had this PC game called Stronghold Crusader. It was set during the Crusades – you were a Lord, attempting to build your empire in the middle east. It was all a delicate balance – you had to have food, but to have farms, you had to have wood, and if you wanted to build a solid wall, you needed rock (which required wood to mine… Yeah, it all depended on wood, pretty much).

At any rate, when you didn’t have enough of something, you could buy it from the marketplace – provided you had set one up at the beginning of the game (it needs wood, too, in case you were wondering). Oh, and all the while, you’re under attack from the Lords around you, who are trying to take your land. The greedy pigs.

Almost every game, there comes a moment when you’re in desperate need of military power – let’s say archers. Well, archers need bows (… Which requires wood), and a barracks to train in (this actually used stone, oddly enough), so either you need to wait for your fletchers to make more bows (and probably get killed while you wait), or you need to buy more bows for your men.

Unfortunately, looking at your gross total income, you realize that you don’t quite have enough money to buy enough bows and pay the archers salary. However, you do have a large pile of rock that you’re not using for anything. Rock… Eh. Your walls will be fine, right? So, you sell all the rock, and use the gold to buy your archers.

If you’re lucky, you’ve just saved the day, and are spared from being pummeled by someone’s knights.

If you’re unlucky, your walls get torn down and you get massacred.

In any case, the game taught me valuable lessons, especially about money. There are three ways to get money in the game. There’s selling supplies, like we talked about. There’s also taxes (which usually make the populace hate you… Sound familiar?), which we can equate to income from a job. And then finally, there’s receiving from an ally.

Last week, I got news that figurative pikemen were coming to tear down my walls. My car insurance bill is due, and because of all the money I’ve sunk into repairs, I was short a couple hundred. My job prospects were nil (interviews were coming, but then CFAW and Fall Break), and I tried my best not to freak out.

In my plotting, I went back to my old Crusader schemes. I found all my old textbooks and sold them back to the bookstore. Not a bad turnout, but nowhere near enough. But! I had left over book dollars on a Barnes and Noble Gift Card! That is still on the market, by the way.

I continued to apply for jobs, but no luck. On Wednesday, however, I prayed with some people about it. And that afternoon, someone who knew the situation gave me a significant amount of money.

People would tell me that God had me, and that I could trust him, but I didn’t really believe it until that moment. It doesn’t mean that you don’t try taxes and retail – well, getting a job and selling things you don’t need – but it does mean that God will lift you up when you feel like you’re falling.

There’s a journey to all of this – a tale that will be told through the chapters and novels of our lives. Allow me to illustrate it this way: Over the past month, I’ve had the beautiful chance to go on two sunrise hikes, in two very different locations. In both, though, there was common theme.

To truly enjoy a sunrise hike is to enjoy it from the peak of the mountain. However, that means that need to do the hike in the pre-twilight hour. Every step you take is barely illuminated by a headlamp, or a cell phone’s flashlight. You stumble, you slip, you falter. There are moments when you sit, the dream of a magnificent sunrise barely strong enough to make you start moving again.

All through the trek up, you don’t get to see where you’re going. The bustling noise of the woods around you hide innumerable animals – furry, creepy crawly and downright scary. The roots that snag your feet, the gravel that rolls underneath your soles; all of it remains hidden in the blackness of the night.

That changes when you start to get near the top. At that point, the sun is beginning to warm the horizon. The light is faint, but it exists. You find that your flashlight doesn’t seem to shine as much as it did earlier. You step around the rock, instead of stubbing your toe.

And then you arrive at the summit, and you see the sprawling countryside. You see where the path has been leading you – but you still have not seen the path. You see your motivation for taking the trail – a brilliant sunrise that floods your heart with more awe and inspiration than even the most rousing chorus – and yet, you still have not seen the trail you took to get there.

If someone, at that moment, showed you pictures of the where you had been, you would not be able to identify it very well. For all you know, it could have been taken on the hiking trail from the mountain over. And yet, somehow, you have ascended a mountain and watched the sun begin it’s own hike across the sky.

God’s provision and will for our lives is like that. In the moment, we don’t see what He’s doing, or how he’s providing. But somehow, we are provided for. Only when you walk back down the mountainside can you see where He guided you.

The hike is hard. It’s tough to wake up at 3:00 AM to drive to a place you’ve never been before, wearing shoddy shoes and a satchel that wasn’t made for hiking. But if you are willing to do that for a sunrise, which lasts for an hour at most, why are not willing to do it for God’s eternal love and providence?

There’s another reason a lot of us are drawn to or away from hiking – it’s very humiliating, especially in the dark. The trails are not easy, and they are not made easier in the dark. Sweat pouring down your back, soaking your shirt, your legs unsteady from walking so long, barely able to catch your breath – a rush, to be sure, but at the same time, you begin to realize that you’re human, and you have limits.

In the same way, there are limits on how much we can provide for ourselves. But God has no such limits. His provision is like the sunrise – stretching from north to south as far as you can see, radiating light across a thousand hills – the cattle of which He owns.

The pictures in this post are poor representations of what it feels like to stand before the glory of a sunrise and greet it. But, in the same way, the stories that we tell of God’s provision cannot express the full weight of awe and humility that we feel when God steps alongside us and clears the way.

But both stories and pictures we share, because, even if they are mere shadows of the actual object, they still touch, and still inspire.

Continue to hike after God’s provision. It is worth every halting step.

(Picture Credit from McAfee’s Knob goes to Jenna Waterman. For more thoughts on sunrises, check out my friend Emily’s post Something About the Sun).