There’s an old saying, “The only good snake is a dead snake.” I disagree. I don’t even think dead snakes are good.
I know some of y’all enjoy your slithery pals, but I hate snakes. I cringe when I see one on TV. I shudder from head to toe when I see one outside my house. And the day I stepped over one on my front porch, I probably set a record for fastest runner in my town—and loudest screamer.
For the past few months, my Facebook news feed has been full of snake photos. Two huge rattlesnakes coiled up on the patio of a friend’s house in Texas. A snake wrapped around a fence post. A poisonous snake sunning on a driveway. And then the one that gave me nightmares for weeks—the snake they found inside my friend Sarah’s house…the first of two that they saw crawling around inside her home.
The situation was made even worse when well-meaning friends started sharing their snake stories about finding one coiled up in their pots and pans, or having a snake crawl out from between the couch cushions, or finding one under the bed. Yes, by this point, I was about to need counseling.
I about had a heart attack when I walked through my house the night after I saw the photo of Sarah’s snake. Let’s just say my husband received a stern warning about leaving his belt on the floor again until I’d recovered from the trauma of empathizing with Sarah.
So you can imagine my reaction when I saw the news post about the lost 8-foot king cobra in Orlando a few weeks ago. I live ten hours away from there, and it still freaked me out. After days of intensive searching for the cobra, they finally called off the search.
And then a few days ago, I read about a lady in the Orlando area who went out to the dryer in her garage. She heard hissing coming from under the dryer and called the folks at animal control. Yeah, you guessed it. An eight-foot king cobra was hanging out under her dryer.
Oh, sweet Jesus! I can’t even imagine. It was traumatic enough from ten hours away!
But you know what, folks? We might not have a king cobra hanging out around us, but Satan—that old serpent—is lurking around to see how he can wound, damage or destroy us. He wants to defeat us.
Just as the folks in Orlando were extra diligent when they knew that cobra was on the loose, we as Christians need to keep our guard up. I suspect that if the homeowner had kept her garage door shut, that snake might not have made it to where he was harmful to her. We need to shut the doors of our hearts to wrong-doing. We need to spend time in His Word, arming ourselves.
We’ve received the warning, friends. Watch out for Satan—that snake!
