It Happened One Night

I was a bad girl last night. It happened at church and during a Bible study while other tables filled with serious people were praying. I was perfectly sane and serious for 95% of the evening but then something happened. I don't know if the "spirit of mischief" thing came on me or my twisted imagination took hold or the magma of my sick Far Side sense of humor rose unexpectedly to the surface but it affected every woman at my table.

Okay, now that I've set the table let me dish out the facts: a lady asked me a simple question knowing that I had gone to Bible college and had prepared for ministry. She hoped earnestly that I knew the answer and this was the question she asked verbatim, "Do you remember the name of the guy in the Bible who tied his ass to a tree and then walked a mile?"

I leaned forward across the table and affirmed, "I've read the Bible cover to cover three times in my life and I have never read that before."

She repeated her question and I looked at her blankly. "Samson carried a town gate on his shoulders and walked away with it but that's the closest I know of anyone doing something like that in Scripture."

Now she looked at me blankly. I thought she had asked the most illogical question I had ever heard. Here comes the punch line: I said, "Besides, how could someone walk with his ass, I mean, his butt tied to a tree?" I said it sincerely, I was not trying to be funny. That is the way I heard and actually saw the question.

Women began to laugh in hysteria and wipe tears from their eyes while other people intent on entreating God were being challenged by our disruption. I began to laugh because everyone else was doing it and it was sort of catching. Then she gasped out between giggles, "No, I was talking about his donkey!"

That's when I lost it. My Far Side imagination took over and I was almost hyperventilating. When this starts happening, I'm the person they have to escort out of the building.

Proverbs 17:22 says, "A cheerful heart is good medicine." Well, we got our full dosage last night that's for sure!