When
I was a teenager our family lived in Algiers which is a suburb of New Orleans. My father served as a Chief Petty Officer in
the Navy on the naval base there towards the end of his naval career. Every year in the spring the city has a big
celebration. I remember going to see
parades, watching brightly decorated floats go by with costumed people throwing
out necklaces of beads, plastic gold and silver coins, and pieces of candy to
everyone around. It was such fun to grab
as many of these items as I could. This
was my happy memory of Mardi Gras (or “Fat Tuesday” in English).
Years
later I gained valuable insight into the reality of just what Fat Tuesday was
really like. As a student in Mission School
our outreach team spent just under a week in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras of
1998. A church in Algiers graciously
housed our team in their Sunday School rooms and chapel for those days and
nights since they were not holding any of their regular scheduled church
services. I remember asking why they
were not holding any services and the pastor stated that during Mardi Gras most
of the members went to visit families in other parts of the country because
they did not want to be in the city when it was full of so much evil. It causes one to wonder though, what would
have happened if they instead had stayed and went to prayer during those two
weeks?
We
were excited to get across the river and check it all out so we rode the ferry
across the muddy red Mississippi
and entered the French Quarter. Even at
10 am there were hundreds of tourists and groups coming in and out of shops and
jazz bars. Many of them were already
quite drunk and staggered out of one bar to the next. My parents were quite careful to protect me
from this side of Fat Tuesday so I was surprised to say the least. We were carrying tracts titled “Are You Lost?”
that had a map of the French Quarter and downtown New Orleans on the inside and
a message about how Jesus can help one find their way spiritually on the back
page. The local Youth With A Mission
base made up the tracts and found that because of the map inside people did not
throw them away when handed one. It was
a great witnessing tool.
Around
noon the local members of Youth With A Mission base team brought a casket accompanied
by a small jazz band playing light-hearted jazz to Jackson Square (in the
center of the French Quarter) and then they set the casket against a tree,
opened it and displayed the body inside.
The band continued to play until quite a crowd had gathered then one of
the mission team members, dressed in preacher’s clothes (circa 1800’s), started
preaching for the funeral. He started
talking about what the man in the casket was like and when he stated, “He was a
good man.” The man in the casket opened
one eye and shouted, “No I wasn’t”. The
funeral continued with the man in the casket countering everything the preacher
said. At first the crowd, when they got
over the shock that the man was not really dead, would laugh at the banter
between the preacher and the man in the casket but after a while the crowd grew
silent. This is when the preacher turned
to the crowd and told them that if the man had really been dead it would have
been too late to change or make amends for the bad things he had done in his
life but the preacher then encouraged the crowd that it was not too late for
them. Many people gave their lives over
to Jesus when the preacher invited them to do so.
Yes, though I walk through the [deep,
sunless] valley of the shadow of death, I will fear or dread no evil, for You
are with me; Your rod [to protect] and Your staff [to guide], they comfort me.
–Psalm 23:4 AMP
Our
team went back to the French Quarter in the evening but found it nearly
impossible to share the Lord because almost everyone we met was drunk. Other things we observed that evening were
people brutally fighting, urinating or defecating in the street, and getting
naked and having sex on open balconies.
These
things were my adult memories of Mardi Gras.
The “magic” of the Mardi Gras of my youth was gone but the memory of
people choosing to believe in Jesus in the midst of all the drunkenness and
other debauchery made the trip worthwhile.
The one thing that still stands out in my mind though is the minister of
that church telling me that the church members left the city during this
time. They obviously hated the evil
running rampant during the weeks of Fat Tuesday so they fled it. I admired the local Youth With a Mission team
members who stayed, prayed and were daily witnesses of the Lord in the midst of
all that evil.
“You, my children, who belong to God
have already defeated this spirit, because the one who lives in you is far
stronger than the anti-Christ in the world. The agents of the anti-christ are
children of the world, they speak the world’s language and the world, of
course, pays attention to what they say. We are God’s children and only the man
who knows God hears our message; what we say means nothing to the man who is
not himself a child of God. This gives us a ready means of distinguishing the
true from the false.” -1 John
4:4-6 PHILLIPS
In
less than two weeks another season associated with evil approaches. It has the fun elements of dressing in
elaborate costumes and getting candy like I enjoyed when I was a child watching
the Mardi Gras floats pass by, but it also has its unseen evil side as
well. Many Christians I know do not
believe in celebrating Halloween. They
leave their porch light off and do not answer the door, watching TV instead and
trying to ignore the festivities. I used
to be one of them. This year I choose to
not be like the Christians that fled New
Orleans for those two weeks in the spring. This Halloween I choose to be a person who
goes to prayer and battle wickedness where it counts, in the spiritual
realm. Will you join me?
The reverent, worshipful fear of the
Lord leads to life, and he who has it rests satisfied; he cannot be visited
with [actual] evil. –Proverbs 19:23 AMP
“…The King of Israel, even the Lord [Himself], is
in the midst of you; [and after He has come to you] you shall not experience or
fear evil any more...” –Zephaniah 3:15b AMP
