Snakes

It's been over 5 months since I've written.  Why not revisit and write about a snake? Sure, sounds good.

I often have the most interesting trains of thought while running along the gorgeous trail by my house.  I find myself lost in the activity of running.  Often I have my ear buds thumping some instrumental, high tempo tunes to keep me at a pace that I enjoy.  Lost in thoughts and daydreams. 

Recently, as I am trotting along, lost in thought and the buzz of my endorphin rush, stepping and breathing steadily, I find myself grinding to a sudden halt and gasping.  Less than two feet in front of me, on the trail, is a small snake enjoying the patch of sunshine.  BLAH!  Don’t like snakes.  So, I stand there, suddenly very aware of my deep breathing and stillness. I’m kind of aggravated with the snake for barging in on my rosy path. I guess I need to go around or over the dang thing if I want to continue along.   So, I take a deep breath, look around me irrationally to make sure I’m not surrounded by an army of little snakes, then take a giant stride over the area in front of the little bugger and keep on tromping along the path.  But my run has been affected.  I can’t seem to stop scanning the ground ahead as I run, just waiting for the next intruder to appear.  I really don’t like snakes.  Yet, that is all I keep thinking about.  Is that a twig up there?  Or a snake?  Is that a breeze blowing those leaves up there, or a snake? 

I go all the way to my turn around point and head back before I realize something that strikes me as profound.  As I head back, I decide to stop looking at the ground and just enjoy the surroundings.  And, I was almost blown away by the magnitude of the glory surrounding me!  The sun shining through the golden leaves and glimmering on the trickling creek water.   The incredible blue sky stretched out brightly into infinity, only interrupted by occasional fluffs of white clouds.  Wow.  I even became more aware of the smells as I looked around and took it all in.  The smell of leaves, grass, damp earth, weeds, trees, and the dirt on the path became more robust.   I saw birds landing and perching on branches.  A whole world of goodness and beauty was right in front of me, yet I had been missing it all because I was wasting my time scanning the ground for another snake. 

The really dumb thing is that this was a little gardener snake that couldn’t even really hurt me.  It’s not like it was a rattler that could pose a threat to me.  It was simply a snake, and that made me uncomfortable. 

I couldn’t help but make a correlation.  Do we do this with people? Aren’t there people whose behavior or choices or sins make us uncomfortable?  If we learn something about a person that is disappointing or maybe even shocking to us, don’t we sometimes stop in our tracks and stare in fear at that thing we are scared of?  That thing that makes them different from us, or that thing that we would never choose to do, or that thing that we thank God we don’t struggle with, or that thing that we do struggle with but hope and pray that no one ever knows!  And, don’t we risk missing out on the beauty and magnitude of glory that makes up that person because we are staring at them waiting to see that snake.  We are often so fearful of that snake that we can’t even learn to lift up our eyes and appreciate the person as a whole.  It’s so sad.   What’s worse is when we irrationally look around to see if there is an army of little snakes that are threatening us and begin to focus on the possibility of a snake appearing, instead of enjoying what is really there.

As a follower of Jesus, I am convicted all the time of my tendency to judge.  And I find myself in prayer all the time asking God to help me see people how He sees them; as a perfect creation worth God dying for!

It seems to me that much of the judging is rooted in fear.  And when we are afraid of something, we don’t want to deal with it.  So, we either try to avoid the thing, or try to destroy the thing, or maybe just gather with others who are afraid of the same thing and commiserate about how awful the thing is! And we also may feel aggravated that the thing would barge in on our rosy little path!

I think about some of the things that so many Christians seem to be afraid of.  Instead of finding a way to love people, they seem determined to focus on the snakes! If they encounter a person who proclaims their belief in a different world religion, or is an atheist, they stop suddenly in their tracks, gasp for air, and focus on that snake in fear and find it very hard to see the magnitude of the beauty of that whole person.  If they encounter a person who is attracted to someone of the same sex, they stop suddenly in their tracks, gasp for air, look at that trait as a snake and find it so hard to lift up their heads and see the magnitude of the beauty of that whole person.  If they encounter a person who struggles with addiction, that addiction becomes the snake.  It could be any number of things!!  I could go on and on.  The truth is that some of the snakes we see really are scary or dangerous.  But, usually, they aren’t at all!  We just don’t like them and they make us uncomfortable. I'm not trying to point the finger to "those Christians".  I often find the "snakes" in others and struggle to lift up my head to the big picture!

I have had several more encounters with snakes on the trail since that day.  I still don’t like snakes.  But I refuse to run the trail with my head down, scanning the ground for that possible encounter while missing the glory of my surroundings.  I refuse to be irrational and feel threatened by a gardener snake simply because it makes me uncomfortable.  And I refuse be irrational and feel threatened because something about another person makes me uncomfortable.  I’m not perfect.  I continue to fear and to judge and to ask for God’s help.  But I hope I am moving in the right direction.