By Staff
Leada Gore, Editor
There's an old Ray Stevens song about a squirrel getting loose in a Mississippi church (Pascagoula, Miss., to be exact) and prompting a revival. In the song, a young boy takes a squirrel to church to show a friend. The squirrel escapes and runs around the church and the excitement is mistaken for a mighty movement of The Spirit.
My favorite line says something about how the excitement ended with "seven deacons and the pastor" getting saved and everyone getting rebaptized "whether (they) needed it or not."
It's in the spirit (no pun intended) of that song that I share the following story. It, too, involves a small Mississippi church and a visit from an animal, although in this case, the incident was decidedly more painful.
Greg and I were in Mississippi for Easter and we went to his grandparent's church for holiday services. The church is an old, one-room wooden building, complete with restroom facilities in an outhouse. The church sits in the woods off a dirt road that's off another dirt road. You take a dirt road to get to that one, too.
Church services consisted of 40 or so people, 13 of whom were our family. We all sat on the side, with Greg's brother, Glenn, on the far end of the pew. I learned a long time ago you had to keep Greg and Glenn separated, especially in a place like church. Greg and I were chatting before the service began when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Glenn jump up and start moving around. Greg and I both turned our heads just in time to see Glenn's untucking his shirt and, well, exclaiming his displeasure at what was occurring.
I'm not sure exactly what was said, but I do know it prompted both his wife and his mother to give him a good smack on the back of the head.
By this point, we all were looking at Glenn and wondering what was happening. It was then we saw the wasp fly out of the bottom of his shirt. It seems the wasp had flown down his collar, stinging him several times on his back. He had jumped up and untucked his shirt, hoping the creature would fly away.
It did, but it didn't make it far. The offending insect was quickly smashed, going to show that Christian charity doesn't extend to stinging wasps.
The commotion died down and Glenn was given some medicine to ward off any allergic reactions. Of course this same medicine caused him to doze off, something I think the preacher understood.
We had a nice Easter service. There wasn't a great revival, but there sure was a lot of excitement at that small Mississippi church. I think the squirrel would have been proud.