Plastic swords, wooden staves, and squirt guns …

I would like to take a moment to talk about faith. Some things have happened recently that have made me think about what it means to have it, live by it, and rely on it. First off lets look at the plastic sword faith the following is an excerpt of a recent news item..

The robber was holding a gun to 5-year-old Mary Long's head when a 3-foot-tall Mighty Morphin Power Ranger leapt into the room.
"Get away from my family," 4-year-old Stevie Long shouted, punctuating his screams with swipes of his plastic sword and hearty "yah, yahs."
The robber and his accomplice, who was waiting outside the apartment Friday night, fled with credit cards, jewelry, cash and other items that Stevie's mother, Jennifer Long, dumped from her purse.
"I scared the bad guys away," Stevie said Tuesday evening at the apartment at 901 Chalk Level Road in north Durham.
Two men had approached Jennifer Long's boyfriend and his son Friday night as they stood outside the apartments she helps manage, according to a police report. The strangers asked for pot, and then a cigarette, and as the son went to get one, both men pulled guns, police said.
One stayed with the boyfriend as the other forced the son back into the apartment, police said. Inside were Jennifer Long, a cousin, Stevie, Mary and two other children, police said.
They were forced on the floor. The robber pointed the gun at Mary and a 1-year-old girl named Sierra, said Stevie's uncle, Bernie Evans, 33, who lives above the Longs.
Enter Stevie.
"During the robbery, a ... boy snuck into his bedroom, dressed himself in a Power Ranger costume and armed himself with a plastic sword," police said. "The child then exited his room and approached the armed suspect, in an attempt to protect his family."
Relatives said the robber abandoned plans to take Stevie's mother to an ATM to withdraw cash when he saw Stevie.
"It tripped him out, and that's when they moved on," said Evans, who did not witness the incident. Jennifer Long declined to comment, saying her employers at the apartment complex would not allow it.
Stevie likes to think he cuts an intimidating figure in his red-and-black mask and foam suit that replicates the rippling muscles of the kiddie adventure show heroes. But Evans said the robber was more startled that Stevie was able to retreat to his bedroom and morph.
Now I ask you; do you have any doubt that there were towering angels, armed with big fiery swords, standing behind Stevie going “Yea! What he said!”? I don’t. Now is what Stevie did a smart thing? Probably not. Is it the sort of thing you want to advise young children to do? Probably not. But God didn’t call us to live by the rules of what is advisable, He called us to live by faith. And sometimes that can mean some pretty odd decisions.

Let’s look at acts of war for instance. Let’s say you want to decimate a country by taking much of it’s work force away from it. Not only that, say you wanted that same work force to walk out of the country loaded down with cash from that country. How would you go about it? For starters, I would be sending in sleeper cells to prepare the way for the armed invasion. Then, once I had subdued the populace, I would move into the plundering stage. Then finally make my escape leaving nothing but scorched earth in my path. This plan might be smart. It might be advisable. But it wasn’t the way God did it at all. War by faith was sending an 80 year old man with a wooden stick. Oh wait, his brother went too. So, two old men and one stick. Wow, now that must have frightened the Egyptian army!! But the fact remains that God did just that, and it worked! Two guys living by faith and marching against an army with a stick. Sounds a lot like Stevie and his plastic sword doesn’t it?

Lastly let me mention squirt guns. Someone, and I am not sure who, came up with an expression. “We should have the kind of faith that would storm the gates of Hell armed with nothing more than squirt guns.” I love that image! I think we need some squirt guns in the tattoo shop just to keep it all in perspective. I bring this up for this simple reason. It has occurred to me that WE MUST BE NUTS!! We are trying to open a Christian tattoo shop just outside one of the harshest cities in the country. We are doing it with no capital, and we are running in to more delays than a government efficiency study. I keep thinking we may open this week, then this week becomes last week. Which is exactly what has happened again. You guessed it… that pesky bathroom fan! AARRGGGG!!! But hey, God never said a life of faith was going to look like an episode of 24. I just never figured it was going to look like “Waiting for Godot” either!

So, I’m only going to say that we should be open this month, if not this week. I will have pictures soon, I promise. Until then…. Keep swinging those plastic swords!!!!

Pete