I left after church on Easter feeling pretty good. We had managed to have multiple services back to back in tight spaces. We had a great crowd. The music was fantastic. The tomb was still empty. Awesome.
I had locked up my office and was headed to my car through the courtyard. As I rounded the corner near the front of the sanctuary a huge flying bug came flying down and dove toward my face. I turned as it kept getting bigger in my field of view. It was as if it had a homing signal in it. It obscured my vision as it entered my eye! I reflexively closed my eye pinning it between my eyelid and my eyeball, and it resisted. The pain was instantaneous. I forced my eye open and rubbed it and something fell away which I stomped. I could not see any of it very well because I was crying and jumping in pain.
I stumbled toward my car holding pressure on my closed eye. I thought about calling Cindy for a ride, but figured I could blink my eye a few more times and it would be clear. Unfortunately, the pain just grew worse. I made it home using my good eye and then we flushed my eye. I took a couple of Benadryl and took a long nap. I got up and my eye was better, but not perfect.
We took a walk in the Cain Center. It was pretty. Flowers were blooming, the dogs were running, and people were out playing disk golf. The sharp pain in my ankle announced the presence of fire ants. I stopped and shook out my sandals, but the damage was done. All week long the spots have blistered and grown and itched.
On Thursday I woke up with a pain on my hip. It was a tick! He was sunk in and full. I doused him with fingernail polish remover and wrenched him free. He did not survive. The spot is still irritated.
Easter does not mean ease. It does not mean done. It means the fight has just begun. It means the attack is coming. The first thing that happened after Easter was persecution and struggle for the Gospel. It's not a time to rest, but a time to resist the powers and principalities-that's what the little messengers reminded me this week. Especially, because the enemy does not have to fight us big, the enemy can fight us small. We lose the battle when we let little things become major things. When we let preference win over substance. Keep your eyes on the empty tomb.