Forfeit

Sword drill.  Ah, those were the days.  For my daughter, church youth is about conferences and  worship bands that imitate the third support act in a gig with Christian multi-media half-whizzy imitations of secular videospeak. 

But I had sword drills.

Perhaps it is wise that in an era when religion is the more associated with acts of violence there are no longer sword drills.  But I should point (sorry!) out that these exercises did not take place in open fields behind the church building skewering dummy infidels.  Rather it was a reference to the Bible - the Christian's sword - and a hunt for words in a given chapter.  

"1 Chronicles 6 and the word is bias".  (Difficult one that actually).  Whoever shouted out the right verse number got a point.  Such innocent, non-techy pleasures . . . .  All of which introduced me emphatically to the Bible as a weapon, the alarming results of which are visible in this photograph.

What good is it for a man to gain the world but forfeit his very soul?  So reads the text.  And beneath it the squashed remains of the irritating fly that made preaching a misery for the short time before it innocently landed on the page carelessly misreading a combatant preacher honed from a young age to using the Bible as a weapon.

Though as I best recall the idea was that the Bible was only a weapon when it was opened.  I can now confirm it is also a weapon when shut - rapidly.