All Shook Up (uh-uh-huh, yeah, hey hey)

I heard something interesting today. A story is circulating through the grapevi – I mean, prayer chain – that a guy with a hatchet broke down The Servant’s door last night and threatened his life. What really got me laughing though, was that the Servant was able to talk down the troubled, hatchet-wielding Dear One and diffuse the situation, after which he promptly called his associate stooge, Tyler, to take care of it.

This inspires a few thoughts. Firstly, there is a very small, exceedingly sinful part of me that derives great glee from the idea of someone taking a hatchet to the Door Built By Faith. That part of me, that angry, disenfranchised part of me, wishes it could have been the one to think of it first.

Secondly, how Arfod is that? Someone breaks down your door with a hatchet in the middle of the night, threatens your life, and after talking down the perp, you immediately call – not the cops, oh no – you call the associate pastor. Why was I ever surprised that Michael Pierce’s punishment was to be relocated to Florida and set up with a new house, a new job, and a new church?

Anyway, I don’t know if this is true or not as I heard it 59th hand, but I called my sources in Parker and am having the rumor verified. In fact, my source is calling the stooge’s mother as I write this to get the juicy details. After all, how can we know how best to pray if we don’t have all the dirt?

In other news, I landed a job as the music director of a local Methodist church and did my first service yesterday.

Yes, I’m serious.

Ok, so my source just called me back and here’s what happened:

Years ago there was this kid named Jeremy who used to come to church. Jeremy was an Elvis impersonator. He was being “discipled” by Tyler, the aforementioned associate stooge, and had in fact been on the phone with him earlier that evening. At 2:30am, Tyler gets a call from The Servant and hears Jeremy’s voice in the background saying something about how he’d better not be calling the police or he’d kill him, etc. Tyler calls the police, then in grand hero fashion, rushes over to The Home Built By Faith, vaults over the shards of broken glass and wood littering the porch, bolts up the stairs to the Bedroom Built By Faith, and promptly falls under the sway of the hatchet-wielding King.

When the cop arrives (this is a very, very small town – its policeman is very short, very overweight, and writes a helluva traffic ticket), he charges upstairs, breaks down the bedroom door, and finds The Servant and The Stooge quivering at axe-point, enthralled by this crazed, sideburn-sporting, grits-eating mama’s boy who is about to send them to the great Heartbreak Hotel in the sky. The cop unloads an entire can of pepper spray in this enclosed space, and you can imagine the mayhem that ensues. Everyone – Servant, Stooge, Elvis and Cop – evacuate to the hallway. Eventually, the pepper spray saves the day as Elvis falls under its sway while Servant and Stooge pray and Cop makes a mental note to, next time, use that shiny metal thing strapped to his hip that is typically reserved for just such a circumstance.

It’s lucky that they got Elvis talking, because his plan was to murder the Servant, and then to go to Tyler’s house and murder him, and probably his wife too. With a hatchet.

I guess he didn’t like the cornbread either.