Contribution: GetOut Games

Ezekiel 7:16 - "But they that escape of them shall escape, and shall be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one for his iniquity."

Last weekend, a group of friends and I went to go check out the hot new local establishment known as 'GetOut Games.' 

The concept is simple. First, the people in charge lock you in a room. There are a smattering of random items and clues you have to utilize to eventually unlock the door and leave. Each room has its own theme or concept, and the one from which we escaped involved stolen gold and a local mob boss.

We ended up escaping the room after about forty-five minutes, with fifteen minutes to spare on the clock. It was truly an epic experience.

Pose like a team, cuz this nonsense just got real.

In all honesty, though, when I first walked out, I barely felt like I helped the team.

I will admit I contributed a few important pieces to the puzzle, like figuring out one of the lock combinations and remembering that we'd found a key. However, compared to most of the members of our party, who possessed keen deductive reasoning and were rapidly finding answers and clues, I was always a few steps behind, and most of my contributions involved figuring out what didn't work.

I would put down the combination lock in my hand. "Well, that sequence of numbers didn't open up this lock."

"It opened up this one!" one of my compatriots called.

I stared at my list of anagrams. "Well, this cube didn't spell anything useful."

"You missed this spelling, though!"

"I think we're supposed to move this potted plant here," I said.

"Right!"

I beamed.

"But you should have put it inside the metal pail!"

I soured.

After I thought about it some more later, however, I realized my contributions, inconclusive though they may have been, still provided building blocks for my more quick-thinking comrades. As I slaved away at solutions that never worked, I was allowing the people around me to use their brains on the solutions that would work.

In the end, I gave the glory to those individuals who were consistently sharp as tacks and on the ball. However, as I walked away from the utterly fantastic experience, I realized that, while my contribution was still small, it wasn't as small as I'd first thought.

Perhaps our contributions are never as small as we think.