Okay so it probably wasn’t the brightest idea in the world. But a few nights ago Jeremy wanted me to tell him a scary story. So I told him one…a good one…a terrifying one.
Bad idea.
But you have got to understand something. As a preacher I’m kind of limited in the type of scary stories I can tell. I didn’t want to tell him some made up ghost story or a story about some hairy monster. I don’t want him to think that there are really ghosts or monsters. And I can guarantee you that one would have ended up under his bed and the other in his closet two minutes after I kissed him good night and left his room. That’s when the crying begins.
So here was my bright idea…I’ll tell him a scary story from the Bible. The story would be true because it came from God’s Word and scary because it was in the book of Revelation. Yeah, yeah I know…I’m an idiot. I should have known that as soon as I began to talk about the demonic creatures in Revelation chapter 9 with faces of humans, teeth of lions and bodies of scorpions that storytime was going south. I should have stopped well before the part that tells how these mutant monsters from hell (literally) would be released from the abyss to torture humanity with stings so bad that the pain from their stings were felt in their victims for months…but I didn’t.
As I was telling this story of the future terror predicted in the last book of the Bible Jeremy kept asking
“Daddy is this true?”
My answer was
“Yes! But don’t worry Jeremy those who believe in Jesus will be protected from these creatures!”
I thought that would keep Jeremy from freaking out. It didn’t. He kept asking questions and I kept answering them the best that I knew how. The more he questioned the more he freaked. The more he freaked the more I freaked because I knew that sooner or later he would tell mama and mama would look at me with a raised eyebrow and ask
“What were you thinking?”
And guess what? That little tattle tale told and that eyebrow raised in my direction.
What’s the lesson I learned out of all this? When my kid wants a scary story I’m sticking with fairy tales. The real stuff is much scarier.
