Crash! Boom! Thunder rolled round and round the valley, echoing off the surrounding mountains.
“I’m scared!” little Remen cried, clinging to his big brother Waran.
Waran was scared, too. His eyes were as big as apples, and he was shaking just a little. But he knew that he had to be strong for his little brother. “Don’t worry,” Waran soothed. “It’s going away. Soon everything will be quiet, and the sun will come out again.”
“But grandma says that the Paroy spirits make the thunder,” Remen whimpered. “She says that if someone in the village marries the wrong person, or if we put two different kinds of food in the same basket, the Paroy will make it thunder. Then a fountain of water will spring up under our house and get bigger and bigger until we fall into the ground!”
Waran caught himself looking down though the bamboo floor slats to see if water had started to spring up. He straightened up. “Don’t believe that, Remen. Didn’t you hear Daddy telling us that Jesus protects us now that we worship Him? Why, just this morning Daddy started teaching us Psalm 23 so that we could say it when we’re scared. Let’s see, I think it was something like this: ‘The Lord is my shepherd . . .’”
Just then there was a blinding flash of lightning accompanied by a crash that seemed to rip the sky in two. A blueish globe of ball lighting appeared under the eaves of their house and began dancing around the rafters. Remen screamed, and Waran turned white. He knew that this must be a Paroy spirit coming to punish them for switching to Jesus’ side. But then he remembered the Bible text that he had started to recite. “The Lord is my shepherd,” he whispered.
At the words, the ball lightning began to dance around agitatedly, coming closer and closer to the brothers.
Franticly, Waran searched his mind for the rest of the text. He couldn’t remember. “The Lord is my shepherd,” he repeated a little louder. Even if this was all that he could remember, they were Jesus’ words, and he trusted in Him.
As if sensing the faith rising in Waran, the fireball rushed straight toward him.
“The Lord is my shepherd!” Waran shouted. Jesus would save them, or they would die trusting Him.
At that instant, the fireball vanished. A few moments later, the storm calmed as well. Remen looked up at his big brother. “Jesus saved us, didn’t He?”
“Yes,” Waran replied, a new confidence filling his heart. “Now we know Jesus will always take care of us. We never need to fear the Paroy spirits again.”
