"Arise, child. Get up. Your enemy strikes you because he fears you. He knows where your strength comes from. Arise and slay your enemy. The battle is before you, but the victory is yours."
Josh's dad lay on his back, hearing those words of assurance echo through his being. He stared into two huge eyes covering his entire field of vision. They were so full. Full of too much for words to ever attempt to describe. Too awe-inspiring to look away from, yet too powerful to level on for more than a few seconds. He saw flames and felt a burning in his stomach.
He rolled to his side and thought for sure he heard the clanking of armor. All senses alert now, he retrieved the glimmering Colt .45 from the rising miniature river coming from the cave. He called out into the mirky grey depths for Josh to respond.
"Dad, I'm okay, but be careful. There are some very strange things this cat has been doing to make me think he knows my every move ahead of time. But I have an idea. Remember my memory verses for last month?" Josh pointedly inquired.
His dad fought for the memory and miraculously recalled it in thought: "1 Peter 5:8-9 says,'Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.'"
"Yeah, son. I get it."
"One more thing I will be using when I get the chance is 2 Corinthians 6:3.", Josh relayed in code.
His dad closed his eyes remembering, "We put no stumbling block in anyone's path so that our ministry will not be discredited.". "How...?"
"You'll understand after your next couple of steps, trust me."
"Okay, I'm coming in.", his dad resolved.
Josh's dad crept forward, the damp rock walls closing in more at each step. One stride from the tee intersection, his foe issued the challenge. The roar filled the cavern and put a deafened grimace on his face. Anger swelled inside, bringing determination as if staring into a seventy mile per hour wind. He stepped into the intersection and responded with his own battle roar.
In front of him lay rare geologic formations of stallegmites pointing towards their counterparts, stallegtites, on the roof of the cave. Water dripped down from the ceiling carrying and depositing minerals to create these conic shaped rocks. The whole scene in this part of the cave looked like an open-mouthed snarl of viscious teeth with these rock formations almost touching each other. He remembered learning the difference between the two types of spindles by assimilating "stallegtites hang tight to the ceiling but you might stumble over a stallegmite.". Now he knew what Josh was intending to use.
With no sound, the cougar appeared, taking flight from what seemed inside the rows of teeth. In mid-air, the huge cat came, mouth wide open, and claws out-stretched. Josh's dad stepped into the attack with a monstrous right hand punch. Somehow his fist found its mark, passing into the cat's open mouth, and sinking deep within its throat. There it lodged, pinning its tongue over its esophagus, and not allowing him to bite down. A battle cry sounded from the shadows as Josh came rushing in. His small warrior-like hands clutched a stallegmite spire he had broken off from the floor. Reaching well behind his head, he drove the pointed rock into the lion's back with all of his strength. It entered, rupturing the spinal cord and continued to penetrate into the kill zone of vital organs. As the tip stopped in the liver, the beast's legs buckled and he fell to the muddy floor. Dark, red life flowed steadily from the fatal wound and merged with cave sediment in the river of flood water. They stood above their conquered foe, chests heaving for air in this stuffy hole in the earth. Pupils constricting, they squinted at the first sight of the sun in more than three days as it hit the cave's entrance.
"Arise, child. Get up. Your enemy strikes you because he fears you. He knows where your strength comes from. Arise and slay your enemy. The battle is before you, but the victory is yours."