Intertain: Chapter 20

This 20th Chapter of Intertain was held on my 40th birthday, and it might just become the final session of such format in the foreseeable future. I started this gaming ministry 10 years ago.

My sisters and some of my dear friends came to celebrate my progress in life. Of particular regard, Audee from my current spiritual community (Grace City Church) joined us officially for the first time. And there was Solara, one rather troubled girl that I have been getting to know for the past month.

Many thanks to my flatmate Oliver as well who, though also a newcomer, opted to help explain the Bible content in Mandarin to ease understanding for a few participants.

Theme: HEIGHTS

I first began preparing for this session last year when I stayed in Room 1707 at Meriton Suites near Chatswood train station. From that lofty vantage point, I gained some much-desired perspective and refuge in a time of dark sadness. Henceforth, the search for new heights occupied my mind.

Waking up in that hotel room each day, I enjoyed a direct, uplifting view toward the City. However, within proximity, I also identified in my sight the very first apartment building in which I had resided when I first came to Australia almost 30 years ago. This served as a reminder of God’s unwavering providence over the decades, a show of love for me as I face uncertainties regarding my future.

Pointing to the relativist nature of heights, I used ikebana as an example — particularly its aesthetic principle of arranging flowers in a HIGH / LOW / HIGH sequence.

This three-step pattern may be compared to the eventful life of Moses:

1. 40 years spent growing up among the Egyptian royal family
2. 40 years spent living and working as a shepherd in Midian
3. 40 years spent leading the Israelites toward the Promised Land

The original trilogy of Star Wars films also adhered to this 1-2-3 progression:

1. 1977: Episode IV — A New Hope
2. 1980: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back
3. 1983: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi

Interestingly enough, Donald Trump’s political career seemingly fit the mould too:

1. 2016: A New Movement (MAGA)
2. 2020: The Globalists Strike Back
3. 2024: Return of the Orange Man

In any case, all of these examples illustrate the vicissitudes of life’s journey. And now thinking of our Lord Jesus, he has had his own journey as well, one with notable highs and lows.

Oliver was tasked with unpacking the tale of Jesus. To begin, he highlighted the divinity of the Word, and established God’s absolute height with Isaiah 66:

This is what the Lord says:

“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.
Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be?
Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?”

With our elaborate introduction out of the way, we were ready to launch into the first game.

How do you think we may seek the God on high?

GAMING

Jusant is an indie game about climbing up a massive rocky pillar that stretches from the dry ocean floor (the game’s title being French for “low tide”) to well beyond the cloud level in order to ascertain why the waters above have stopped flowing down to earth. In other words, this is a quest to ascend the Tower of Babel for the purpose of doing some space plumbing.

I passed the controller to Audee, knowing that he is a bouldering enthusiast. Although bouldering doesn’t actually utilise ropes or harnesses, he soon got the hang of the game’s traversal mechanics: the limited safety rope that could be retracted after reaching a new ledge, the steel pitons that could be driven into surfaces to allow for rest mid-climb, and just having ample skill in not only controlling individual arms without confusion, but to also determine viable paths upward when working on each and every rock formation. Not a bad start at all.

Then it was time to switch things up, so we let Hans have a go. And most certainly, he switched gears and demonstrated a different style of climbing, to say the least.

Guided perhaps by his videogame brain, Hans displayed reckless courage by pulling off advanced moves such as grappling, swinging, and double-jumping while putting total trust in his safety rope, which rescued him from certain death multiple times. It looked dangerous, but up he went.

Yet after finally reaching a major clearing and ending the chapter, it would seem that we were still much closer to the ground than the sky. Striving for heights proved a highly onerous activity.

SHARING

Since God (or even gods and other deities) is generally understood as residing on high, people from varying cultures have been known to climb mountains in their search for higher power.

In discussing what mortals do to seek God, Audee mentioned prayer, and Daniel brought up study, meditation, and imitation. Somehow, that led to us talking a bit about taking mushrooms as well.

Oliver also chimed in, noting that some visit temples to give offerings. And dear old Hans, thinking about the group of women (including Katy Perry) who were launched into suborbital space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket in recent news, made the connection between space exploration and a desire to contact and experience the divine.

But truth be told, a rocket is a much faster way to reach space than climbing a tower, that’s for sure!

WISDOM

In the third and final act of the life of Moses, he actually climbed a mountain multiple times to meet and talk with God, acting as the mediator between the Lord and the Israelites.

Oliver presented us with one of these instances as recorded in Exodus 19:

The Lord descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to its peak.

So Moses went up and the Lord said to him, “Go down and warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord and perish. Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.”

It is important to note that God had to descend to stoop down low enough so that he is at level with the peak of Mount Sinai. From this, we may truly realise that even if we reach high places on earth, there is no guarantee to meet God unless he decides to descend from heaven.

Moreover, the glory of God is so intense that even if you do meet him, you are at risk of perishing immediately if proper precautions aren’t taken.

Seeking and encountering God isn’t quite possible by our own human efforts, Oliver concluded. Thankfully, he then revealed to us the heart of the Father in a verse from Isaiah 57:

This is what the high and exalted One says — he who lives forever, whose name is holy:

“I live in a high and holy place, as well as with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

Indeed, even though we couldn’t ever make our way up to the heavens, God’s willingness to reach out to our midst gives us hope. And so we eagerly await.

Have you ever experienced falling from a great height?

GAMING

The very first game played during the very first Intertain 10 years ago was World of Goo.

And now, the boba-like balls are back after all this time in the long-awaited sequel: World of Goo 2! Nostalgia filled the room, at least for some of us who were there from the beginning.

My elder sister May scooted forward to my laptop and played a few levels. After a bit of a refresher, she was once again building trusses and guiding her little gooey minions to their escape pipes.

The levels chosen offered more vertical challenges, and also introduced new structures in action, including ones that either expand or contract. In a stage called “Extraction Team”, May started up high and constructed a special blue truss downward to retrieve some goo balls stranded in a deep pool much like Tom Cruise (of Mission Impossible); and once in contact with the pool, the blue truss actually began to contract, allowing it to return to the heights from where it came.

Daniel followed on and tackled another stage called “Impale Shrinky”, where he worked with hollow goo balls that formed a clear, straw-like truss that could suck up liquid goo, which then he redirected into destabilising a tower that housed a giant goo ball. Once liberated, that big ball rolled down a hill and into a grinder, converting it into liquid form, which then acted as fuel for a curious squid-looking turret that reconstructed the gooey liquid into solid, regular-sized balls, and then…

Anyway, there was a lot happening, but I think most of us remember the rather spectacular ending: Daniel attached a set of balloons to a small truss carrying the surviving goo population, sending the structure airborne, and ultimately finding a pipe in the sky that seemingly led to the heavens.

There’s just something beautifully metaphoric about the entire sequence.

SHARING

They say that what goes up, must come down.

For Audee, he told us that it is usual for him to fall from about a 4-metre height while bouldering. Meanwhile, Daniel described his experiences of falling out of airplanes… in his dreams.

I thought about the tale of Icarus flying too close to the sun. Pride comes before a fall.

Oliver painted the scene of his short mission trip to Cambodia, where he tasted such exquisite cuisine that induced a food high, only to be disrupted by mission duties. Peculiar, but still relevant.

WISDOM

Oliver continued on to unveil, through John 1, what God did to draw close to us:

The Word became flesh and made his home among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus didn’t fall from height by accident. But in accordance to the Father’s grand plan, he voluntarily descended from heaven to live within these lowly earthly realms. Moreover, his eternal divine glory was packaged into human flesh, so that regular folks could access him without getting hurt.

This generous, humble act remains an example to us all, as Philippians 2 states:

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped to his own advantage…

But rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself further by even becoming obedient to death — and death on a cross, no less!

Indeed, Jesus managed the unthinkable. Not only did he humble himself by becoming a human born on earth, but he also surrendered his life to a humiliating execution, which then sent him to Hades. We could say that he surely went the extra mile, downward; he went to extreme lows for our sake.

Oliver explained how such heroics dealt with humanity’s sin and bridged that insurmountable chasm that separated us from the heavenly Father. So now, we may finally access God, even without having to scale a single mountain. How very gracious and considerate!

Are you ever confused about which direction is upward?

GAMING

To cap off our time of play, we warped into the co-op sensation that is Split Fiction.

The duo-protagonists Mio and Zoe are authors invited to an experimental simulation device that’s promoted as a different way of publishing their writings, but then turns out to be a sneaky attempt for the company to extract and exploit their creative ideas.

While putting up resistance, Mio accidentally enters into Zoe’s stasis bubble powered by the device. The two authors become trapped inside a fused simulation of contrasting genres: Zoe’s fantasy with Mio’s science fiction. To escape, they must survive through their stories, find an exit via glitches.

Audee (as Mio) and Oliver (as Zoe) were selected as the initial pairing to venture into this adventure. They were dropped into a side story of Zoe’s called “Mountain Hike”, as per the day’s theme.

This hike, however, was assisted by acrobatic giants. Audee and Oliver were thrown around by the giants like crazy, and needed to time jumps, along with grappling and swinging at an intense pace. The upward progress was much quicker than usual, but also riskier. Oliver, in particular, struggled more with the controls, but eventually reached the end.

Afterward, they were transported to a major story of Mio’s named “Neon Revenge”, at which point Daniel subbed in for Oliver, anticipating greater challenge.

Entangled within a cyberpunk dystopia, Audee and Daniel became cyber ninjas looking for revenge against the city’s crime boss. On their way to infiltrate the headquarters, they traverse a distinct climbing section involving rotating camera perspectives and shifting gravity. Even with the skyline visible in the background, it was at times tricky to tell whether or not they were going upward.

Things changed when they broke into a dealership and hopped on a motorbike, and an all-out action sequence ensued with Audee keeping eyes on the road and Daniel fighting back against cop vehicles giving chase. With everything going on, they also had to fiddle with a phone in order to disarm the self-destruction protocol that triggered when the bike was stolen.

In the end, they made it atop a skyscraper and defeated a tank and a battle-mech piloted by the crime boss herself. We were impressed, especially for Daniel who, back in the day, really had much trouble playing on console controllers. No doubt, he has since come a long way.

What a splendid gaming finale to 20 big sessions of Intertain!

WISDOM

Taking the spotlight again, Oliver offered a recap of the journey of Jesus, who started off heavenly high, stepped down to an earthly low, then even sacrificed his own life and descended into the underworld, and now… in what can only be described as the greatest reversal in the history of absolutely everything, Philippians 2 declares:

God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name; at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow — in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

His enemies thought they brought him down forever, but the resurrection of Jesus forever remains the bedrock of everything Christian: death becomes life; defeat becomes victory; poverty becomes prosperity; foolishness becomes wisdom; and most importantly, humility (the art of dropping low) becomes exaltation (the act of soaring high) — great reversals abound in God’s economics.

Therefore, for those of us who follow Jesus, we aren’t left behind in regard to his glorious ascension. Oliver produced the receipt from Ephesians 2 to back this up:

Due of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Jesus even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved. God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he may show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

Oliver left it on that highest note, as our spirits were uplifted by the good news.

My Parting Encouragement

To conclude this birthday Intertain presentation, I told the famous story, Footprints in the Sand —

One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord,
 across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
 one belonging to me and one to my Lord.

After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
 I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
 especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
 there was only one set of footprints.

This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.
“Lord, you said once I decided to follow you, you’d walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troubled times of my life,
 there was only one set of footprints…
I don’t understand why, when I needed you the most,
 you would leave me by my lonesome.”

He whispered, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you;
 never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
 it was because I carried you through the toughest times.”

And so here is my final chain of thought on our life’s journey.

We all strive to pursue heights for perspective and security; standing on higher ground also protects us from being overwhelmed by life’s ruthless tides.

Given the reality that there isn’t anyone more elevated than the Lord Jesus, when we are with him — or better yet, being lifted up onto his shoulders — we discover the supreme vantage point.

From the story above, we realise that Jesus carries us during life’s fiercest trials and tribulations.

So it is only logical to conclude that when we fall to our lowest point in life, we are actually privileged to ascend to new heights from which we may witness a certain path forward, leading unto eternity.

Trust me on this, and be encouraged. I am a wise 40-year-old now!

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Attendance [8]: Audee Gianda Budiman, Ayk Iano, Daniel Lee, Hans Leonard Widjaja, May Chien, Oliver Sooh, Shona Liu, and Shun-Shun “Solara” Feng.

Giveaway: Jusant to Hans Leonard Widjaja.