Eaten by a Snake

 

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Matthew 10:16 Contemporary English Version

¹⁶  I am sending you like lambs into a pack of wolves. So be as wise as snakes and as innocent as doves.

 

When Dad was teaching at Helderberg College, we lived in one of their houses across the valley from the college. It was one of a row of five houses nestled in a peach orchard. On occasion the farm manger, Lionel Webster, would have the ground ploughed between the peach trees to keep the weeds down. On those occasions I would set out, barefoot, through the freshly ploughed clods to my friend John Raitt who lived next door.  I would take frequent, short steps and trample out a path we could use to visit each other.

On one such occasion, I came across a small snake. Much like young Gerald Durrell on Corfu, I was enamored by the wealth of plants and wildlife that flourished in the Western Cape of South Africa. I already knew about many of the venomous African snakes such as puff adders, cobras, and boomslangs. I didn’t even think of these snakes as I leaned over and picked this snake up by the tail. This one was clearly not one of those poisonous serpents.

I held it up by the tail, intrigued by three lumps under its skin, each about a handsbreadth apart from the other. The snake’s head was well off the ground, even though I was only about seven years old. I held it out at arm’s length and watched, entranced, as the little lumps slid slowly down the snake’s body towards its head. Suddenly the naked, slime covered, pink body of a baby mouse came out of the snake’s mouth and dropped gently to the ground. This tiny pink, furless mouse was galvanized into immediate action. It raced towards the nearest dark gap under the clods and disappeared from sight. Looking back at the snake I was delighted to see a second lump materialize into another naked pink body that also disappeared under the clods. The third lump followed suit.

I dropped the snake and knelt on the soft ground to see what had happened to the baby mice. They had totally disappeared. I have long since wondered how they could have lived in the body of a snake for who knows how long with no air and whether they died because they had no fur and so dried up into a frizzle or actually survived and lived the normal life of a mouse.

I also can’t help but think of how Satan is often compared to a snake. He wanders around doing his best to gobble up innocent souls. Then, sometimes, along comes a messenger of God and releases the soul to give it another chance at life. If we are fortunate to be released, do we dash away from Satan's fearsome grip?

Thank You, Lord, for freeing us from the pitiless clutch of Satan and aiding us as we dash away!

 

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[1] http://gallery.kingsnake.com/data/68690DCP_0757.JPG

Perfection

 

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1 Peter 1:3 Good News Translation

A Living Hope

³ Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because of his great mercy he gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ from death. This fills us with a living hope,

 

This morning I read[3] “How beautiful you are, my love, how perfect you are!”

My mind roamed randomly through everyone I knew. I could think of no one that this compliment could be applied to. Firstly, my loving wife came to mind. She is precious in so many ways. She has faithfully looked after me as I lay at death’s door. In many ways she has been and still is the perfect love partner for me. Of course, when you get to know anyone, you begin to notice their foibles.

I thought of the people whom I have looked up to over the years: my colleagues and former associates. Then there were the teachers and pastors, some of whom spent considerable time and effort to meet my physical, financial, and spiritual needs. I admired many of them and am thankful for their care and interest in my well-being. But perfect? Not by a long shot.

One candidate might have been Pastor P. H. Coetzee. He preached the most powerful sermons I had ever heard as a young kid growing up. He ran a week of prayer at my primary school and held up the image of perfection in a beautiful way. When I was 8, I attended a junior camp at Hartenbos in South Africa, and he led out in a way that captured my admiration. Had you asked me about a perfect person when I was ten or twelve, I might have thought of him.

When I was studying at Sedaven High School, he was the chairman of the school’s board. At one point his son, Leon, was only peripherally involved in a gross breach of school principles that caused the faculty to expel about a dozen students. Many of those expelled were rebellious and evil in every sense imaginable. In many ways, Leon was an ideal student, so P. H. Coetzee called the school board together and reinstated his son. (Mark Twain[4] once quipped, “In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.”)

He couldn’t just reinstate his son, however, without being accused of nepotism. So, he had all of those students reinstated in school. This resulted in a total breakdown of discipline in the school. It almost caused the school to close. Suddenly those perfection images of Pastor Coetzee, were ripped from my eyes.

None of us are perfect[5]; “everyone has sinned and is far away from God's saving presence.” As Peter writes “Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because of his great mercy He gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ from death. This fills us with a living hope.” This hope is that Christ has died for us so that we might live in His perfection. God’s plan is stated thus:[6] “As far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our sins from us.” He then looks at us and says, “How beautiful you are, my love, how perfect you are!”

Lord, thank You that in Your eyes we appear with Christ’s perfection. Thank You for saving us completely!

 

 

 

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[2] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/46/63/7b/46637b6155595658043c561f192ba7dc.png

[3] Song of Solomon 4:7 GNT

[4] Mark Twain Following the Equator: A Trip around the World

[5] Romans 3:23 GNT

[6] Psalm 103:12 GNT

 

Victoria Falls Bridge

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Psalm 143:8 Good News Translation

⁸ Remind me each morning of your constant love,
    for I put my trust in you.
My prayers go up to you;
    show me the way I should go.

 

We had long dreamed of taking our children back to Africa to touch base with their heritage. When I mentioned it to them, they all thought it was a marvelous idea. One of them couldn’t join us for several obvious reasons. Esther stayed home “with the baggage,” and so deserves equal shares with those who went “into battle.”[2] When I contacted my physician niece, Andi, about what inoculations we should get, she instantly yearned to join us, which she did.

Sylvia and I have often traveled to places and even taken an extra person along. When it’s far away, we get off a plane, rent a car, and drive until it’s time to sleep. We find a camping spot or motel and then drive on in the morning. Now with seven of us it was impossible to be so spontaneous. Furthermore, there were unpredictable problems, including more extensive crime than we were used to. We couldn’t just sack out anywhere and expect to find our car waiting for us in the morning.

We met on more than one occasion to discuss a desired itinerary. We settled on two definite goals: First, visit Helderberg College where my Dad and Mom had spent over 20 years and I was a child. All three of our kids had been there at least 4 years while they were very young. Second, travel to Solusi University which Dad had founded and where my Mom lies buried. The rest of the trip was devoted to sightseeing and experiencing the natural wonders of Africa.

Special thanks to our daughter, Julia, and our daughter-in-law, Uni, for tirelessly searching the web for the best accommodations and rentals. All of us have expressed an appreciation for a marvelous time reconnecting with our common heritage and experiencing some of nature’s African marvels. The success of our trip was not without a lot of prayer on many sides.

Thank you, Lord, for the chance to see and experience the love and sacrifice our family gave in Africa. Give us their spirit in our daily lives now.

 

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[1] Our Group overlooking Victoria Falls Bridge: Wil, Sylvia, Uni, Fred, Andi, Julia, David

[2] 1 Samuel 30: 24.

Lively Stones in the Spiritual House

 

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1 Peter 2:5 (King James Version)

 ⁵Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

 

Growing up in the South Africa of apartheid I attended a white school. The law insisted that I do so. I attended the Helderberg College Church. Our family always sat on the front row. This was ostensibly because my grandfather was hard of hearing, which he was. But we continued the practice even after he had died.

White students and white families filled the church. Because there was no church nearby that the blacks could attend, they were allowed to come to our church. But they had to sit in the very back row of the balcony. Up there they would not be noticed by guests coming to our church.

When I was twelve, my grandfather died. Our family moved from South Africa to Solusi, a black school in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Here all of the white missionaries sat in the front few rows of church. This was to set an example to the “poor benighted” blacks who filled the rest of the church. We wore suits and ties. Our shoes were polished. Our hair was neatly combed.

I knew that many of the missionaries really sat in the front so that they would not be contaminated by coming into contact with the blacks. They seemed afraid to be too closely associated with people who came to church barefoot because they owned no shoes. Afraid that their “Sabbath” dresses and suits might brush against the only dress or shirt a person owned, and in which they had walked maybe a mile or more so that they could go to church.

I was, of course, not immune to picking up on some of this superior attitude. As a child growing up in the home of a college teacher at Helderberg, I felt superior to the poor kids who were simply students living in a dormitory. We all felt superior to the blacks sitting in the back row of the balcony to whom no one deigned to speak. They were a real embarrassment to the church.

Once in a while I would express something that hinted at my feeling of superiority. My mother would call me aside, look me square in the eye, and say in tones of rebuke: “You didn’t make yourself white!” Often this would be followed by a pointed lecture about my real place in society. We were simply each one a stone that God was building into a His spiritual house.

In Rhodesia we didn’t have the strict apartheid laws. On a regular basis Mom would invite the older (black) people into our home for a feast. She made no bones about the fact that these women were her friends. Other missionary families, trying to preserve their thin veneer of superiority, frowned on this practice. Nor would any show their faces near our home during one of Mom’s feasts. The local people loved her. They regarded her as their friend, too.

After working in Africa for 40 years, my parents’ time came to return to America for rest and retirement. But Mom’s heart couldn’t take the impending separation from her friends. Six weeks before they were scheduled to leave, she had a heart attack. Now she is buried amongst her friends in Africa; one stone amongst the many in the spiritual house God is still building.

Help me remember, Lord, that in Your sight I could count as nothing, but You have given me the honor of being a stone in the spiritual house You are building.

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[1] https://www.standout-cabin-designs.com/small-stone-cottages.html