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Every Day Bible

A Serious Reason for Silly String

Have you ever shot Silly String at someone? I have memories of camps and birthday parties with silly string fights and the annoying cleanup that always followed.

Silly String is one of those accidental products. The inventors were trying to formulate a hardening foam that could be sprayed on a broken leg to form a cast in the field. The medical product didn’t pan out, but the researchers noticed how much fun it was to shoot—and so the product lives on as a kid’s toy.

In 2006, a soldier named Todd Shriver wrote home asking his parents to send him some Silly String. He didn’t want to ambush his friends, though. He wanted to save their lives from ambush.

Shriver and his unit realized that silly string made the prefect booby trap detector. When entering a suspicious place, the soldiers could spray the silly string across the room. If there were any tripwires to IEDs, the string would land on the invisible wire harmlessly and identify its location. There’s no telling how many lives this silly invention has saved.

I wish there were a spiritual version of silly string that could be sprayed across our lives. Real dangers surround us. Forces of evil are at work in our world, and too often we walk around totally blind to their destructive potential, until we trip the trap and it is too late.

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)