Sunday, November 14, 2010

Watch Out For Snakes!

A Few years ago we had a garden snake in our front yard. Luckily I wasn't home for it, but legend says it climbed up our front door trying to get in the house! Gross! For quite a long time after that happened, every time I would leave the house to go to work, my mom would walk me to the door and then yell out as I walked to my car:

"Watch out for snakes!"



It became our family joke... always watching out for snakes. But perhaps there was something prophetic there. Just the other night my mom told me this story that she heard in a sermon...

There was a young woman who bought a snake when it was just a 'baby.' This snake would sleep on a pillow next to her head and then when it started to get bigger, it would sleep at the foot of her bed. 'Snuggles' was her precious pet. One day she took her snake to the vet because he hadn't been eating for about a month or so.

"Have you noticed anything else strange about your snake besides his eating habits?" the vet asked.

"Yes actually" the concerned snake owner explained, "Usually he sleeps at the foot of my bed. Lately I will wake up in the middle of the night and find him stretch out by my side, from my feet all the way to my armpit."

"Kill it"

"What??"

"Kill the snake... now."

"Kill Snuggles? I can't kill Snuggles! Why do I need to kill him?"

"Because," the vet explained, "He is measuring you to see how much bigger he needs to get to eat you."

Thoughts:

EWWWWWW!!! SNAKES!!!
EWWWWWW!!! SNAKES THAT EAT PEOPLE!!!

Once I finally got through the heebie jeebies, my mom talked about the reason this story was told: SIN!

Sin! It's "crouching at your door" (Genesis 4:7)! And it wants to EAT you! Sin... it starts out as something small, something managable, but then it grows to a size where you have only two choices: let it gobble you up in your sleep or kill it.

More thoughts:

EWWWWWW!!! SIN!!!
EWWWWWW!!! SIN THAT EATS PEOPLE!!!


Lessons of the day:

1. Don't have snakes as pets. I mean, really people??

2. "Be killing sin or sin will be killing you." - John Owen

1 comment:

Katie Alicea said...

Who in the world would ever sleep with a pet snake in their bed!? What the!!? To me that's the same as sleeping with a box of razor blades, a weed eater, or perhaps an automatic weapon with no safety. I wish I was as afraid of sin as I am afraid of snakes.