spiritual battles

Earlier this week, I went to the Dollar Store for some last minute Christmas things. There is a young man who works there that I always enjoy checking me out. He's friendly, talkative, and polite, three very good qualities.
This trip, however, as he was checking me, I noticed he had a really bad black eye. It was swollen and several different colors, and he had a large band aid in the corner of his eyebrow. It was bad enough that I thought he had been in a car wreck, or maybe mugged or any number of things, and I asked him "What happened to your poor eye?"
He smiled sheepishly at me, and lifted the corner of the band aid. "I had my eyebrow pierced," he said. He had two large silver balls, one on the top of his eyebrow, and one underneath. "Oh, good grief" I cried with a half smile on my face. "I don't feel sorry for you anymore! Didn't that hurt?" "Not really," he said. "The needle didn't hurt at all. It did hurt when he put the clamp in." I just shivered. I couldn't imagine putting myself through that voluntarily. We talked as he finished ringing up my things, and as I left, I said I hoped his eye got better soon. He said he did too, because he planned on having the other eyebrow done next week. I just shook my head at him, and left.
Since the Dollar Store didn't have everything I needed, I stopped at our small towns local grocery store. I bought one item, and got in line to check out. As I waited, I glanced around at the other people. There, standing next to me in line was another young man, but this one seemed a bit different from the one at the Dollar Store. His face was covered with piercings: three just under his bottom lip, more in his eyebrows and in his ears, but these piercings were mean looking spikes. In addition to the piercings, he just looked unapproachable. His shoulders slumped, his face was unhappy looking. He looked as if he expected someone to look at him in a negative way.
I checked out and went to my car. I put my bag in and then got into the front seat, put on my seat belt and got out my keys. As I put the key in the ignition, I looked up and saw the young man with the spiked piercings standing on the sidewalk, waiting for me to back out so he could get into his car. As my car started, our eyes met and I smiled at the young man, but he did not smile back. His eyes looked empty, not mean, not mad, just empty. He didn't even seem to really be seeing me, even though we were certainly looking at each other. In that same instant, a song by Steven Curtis Chapman came on in my CD player, and I heard the words a godly father had written about his daughter: "You are a masterpiece that all creation silently applauds, and you're covered with the fingerprints of God."
The thought immediately sprang into my mind, as I took in again his spiked piercings, sad, unhappy countenance and slouched shoulders, "It's not the fingerprints of God he's covered with."
I lowered my eyes and backed out my car. I felt heavy all the way home. I felt as if for a split second, a veil had been lifted and I could see the spiritual battle taking place for our souls. I felt sad for the young man, whatever it is in his life that made him look like he did that day. I want to remember to pray for him, and even, if God wants, maybe see him again someday when I can talk to him. This is an awfully small town. It wouldn't be impossible.

Ephesians 6:12 "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."

Peace in a Storm

Living in Texas for most of my life, I am used to sudden storms. Tornado warnings, lightening, and flash floods – I take it all in stride. Which is how I got ‘the picture’.

I had taken my children to town in our rural area, and came back home just ahead of what promised to be a big thunderstorm. The skies were black, lightening flashed, and I was just glad to beat the rain so that I could get my groceries in before it hit. I left the door open to the cool breeze as I put things away, when a glance outside caught my attention. This looked worse than I had realized. My children and I gathered on the porch to watch, when I noticed that all the cars on the highway across our pasture had not only stopped, but had pulled over on the side of the road. This really got my attention. We are a very conservative, homeschooling family, and we don’t have a TV, and at that time, we didn’t have a radio that worked most of the time, so I trotted across the pasture, across the highway, and approached a car to see what was going on. A lady informed me that there was a tornado in the little town a mile or so up the road, and no one wanted to drive into it.

Well, that was exciting! I trotted back across the highway and the pasture, only to meet one of my sons halfway, who was running towards me with the telephone. It was my husband. He had stopped on his way home from work to take shelter from the storm in a store, and saw a television update on the tornado. The Doppler radar showed the tornado, and from the looks of it, it was at the creek at the back of our house. Terrified, my husband was calling to make sure we were alright, only to hear from my children that mommy was running across the highway trying to find out what happened. TAKE SHELTER my husband demanded. I ran back to the house.

But it was so fascinating to see the revolving cloud developing across another pasture from us. I thought, just a quick picture, and I ran to get my camera. I ran back outside and aimed. My sweet little daughter, who was always the center of attention and the object of my picture taking, jumped on the swing in front of the camera and waved just as I snapped.

We watched the cloud a little longer, and when it moved directly over our heads, I decided to give my children some instruction on where to get if I yelled for them to take cover, and we went back into the house.

No tornado ever hit us, and I didn’t think of it much again – until I got the pictures back! Have you ever been surprised by the perfect shot you didn’t know you had gotten? There was my little girl, sweet, unafraid smile, waving at mommy, her red sucking thumb very obvious, completely framed by a revolving cloud behind her head. When my husband saw the picture, he shouted “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!?!?!”

I don’t know, but hey, that is one amazing picture, huh??

A couple of weeks later, another storm approaches. My husband, who no longer trusts me, calls. “Carla,” he says. “There is another tornado warning issued. Do not run across the pasture, do not take pictures. Stay in the house and take shelter!” I laugh.

We get a copy of the picture to hang on the wall. A visiting preacher from another state comes to stay with us, and sees it. He is floored by the perfect, trusting peace on my little girl’s face, with the tornado behind her. He asks for a copy, he wants to hang it, and he quotes scriptures on peace. I gladly give him a copy.

I send copies to my email lists and give them away to friends. Months later, an email friend who lives in Canada tells me she was listening to a preaching tape, and hears the preacher, who does not know us, talk about a picture he has seen of a little girl, smiling, trusting, with a tornado behind her in the background. It’s a picture of ‘perfect peace in the midst of a storm’ he says. “Hey, I know that little girl!” my friend shouts to her tape player!

Perfect peace in a storm, a mothers love, and little girl’s trust. Who’s afraid of a little tornado??