This weekend, I saw Mo and Janet eating lunch in a Baptist Temple that had a kitchen in the back! They ate right in the main auditorium, almost directly in front of the main entrance doors. I warned Mr Mo I was going to snitch on him! I know this because, well, Deniese and I were right there with them,

Where could we have gone that would find us eating lunch in a preserved church serving lunch? The same place which sports barkers. a midway, deep fried Oreos, rides, chickens, horses, tractor pulls, and deep fried cheese curds (which were quite tasty, by the way!) The Big E, the area's largest fair/carnival that's held in Springfield each year for a couple weeks. Many years ago when the Seatons were still members here I was chatting with Wayne about how much 1 missed the state fair back in Ohio, and he and his family took us to the Big E for a day. I love fairs. I love the smells, the good humor everyone has, the bizarre events and sights, and of COURSE the food. Everything deep fried (you name it!) and cholesterol-choked heart-stopping delicious. Check out the bearded lady while you chomp your huge greasy turkey leg! Yum!

What I remember most about fairs when I was young was that our town had one, and while we did have horse pulls and 4H pigs like Wilbur, the biggest attraction by far was the Friday night crash-up derby. The grandstands would be packed and the dirt arena sprayed down as heat after heat of cars would slide around in a mad frenzy trying to crush each other yet stay mobile themselves. This was such a money maker, we boys would have to peek through knotholes in the fence to see in, tickets being too expensive. Before the proceedings done commenced. folks were allowed to look over the cars. Not only would the winning car's driver get a purse, but people were taking bets on which car that would be. I remember 1976 in particular.

Usually derby cars are ugly, brutish beasts with lots of steel and snorting engines. There was this one car, though, that looked a lot like a sports car. Huh? So we talked to the driver to see what the scoop was This was some little vega-like vehicle which had a powerful engine but come on, it was going to be tromped by the station wagons. It was even painted different than most cars. Most derby cars look mean and have things like "hit me" or rude slogans on them, but this one was uniformly painted bright green and all pretty. It looked more like it belonged on the race track than in a pool of mud with a bunch of thugs. Yet the driver was confident he was going to dance around and remain undamaged due to his speed.

Well, we just had to see this, so there we were with our noses pressed to the boards watching this bright shiny "misfit" in a sea of dingy brown. The air horn blew and the cars all started slashing into each other. It wasn't long until everyone was trying to turn our favorite into crumpled sheet metal. But no one could hit him! He would dance around as the cars bashed into each other instead of him, living an amazingly charmed existence. This went on for quite a while, as car after car was battered out of the running. It all came undone, though, when our guy nicked another car.

See, the point of the crash-up derby was to crash! Our guy backed into someone to put him out of action, and one of his fancy painted fenders knuckled under and poked into his rear tire! About 30 seconds later, three cars he had made a fool of a few minutes earlier found him sitting there disabled and turned him into a green sandwich. The end.

This is kind of a long story, but there is a point here. The driver had spent a lot of time making his car look good. His strategy was to avoid everyone. As Christians, we might study a lot to confirm our faith, and make our lives look very good. Nothing wrong with that, like the car it makes us very attractive, and yes sometimes even a target! But instead of making ourselves tough and ready to combat who we must, we might focus on looking good and pure, "religious" outward. Further, we might adopt a strategy of simply saving ourselves, and avoiding everyone else. Yet the word is a sword. A sword does defend, it's true, and keeping it bright and shiny is important; but the point of a sword is to attack. We are going to collide with people of the world, and we are going to collide with false doctrine. I would submit that we are actually SUPPOSED to do that very thing! Besides, avoid them as much as we want, they are not going to avoid us. They might even hunt us down because we are different. Do we shod our feet with the preparation of the gospel so we look stylish? So we can run away faster? Why do we study? To put others down so we look good? To shut them up so they go away? Or to bring them to the gospel? Think about it!

Randy