Good morning…

Walking with a friend this week, I learned an interesting fact. The bite of a snake is not what kills a person. Poisonous venom spreading throughout a body is the common culprit of death by snakebite.

As I research this truth further, I learn some interesting facts.

One common misconception is that snakebites themselves are usually fatal. In truth, even during frontier times, only one quarter of the bites from pit vipers (think copperheads, rattlesnakes, and cottonmouths) resulted in the death of a person. One reason for this fact is that often snakebites are “dry,” meaning that a bite occurs but no venom is injected. In this day and age, the worldwide rate of deaths from snakebite is less than one percent of the people bitten, due largely to the development and distribution of effective anti-venom. Many more people die from allergic reactions to wasp, hornet, or bee stings and people are about nine times more likely to die from being struck by lightning than to die from being bitten by a snake in the United States today.

So what does this mean to our life of faith?

First, the enemy of God can bite us with lies and deception, subtly toying with our vulnerable emotions. Yet most of these bites are harmlessly “dry.” We may “horrible-ize” the assault, but no deadly venom is injected. What is the lesson here? Keep life’s challenges in perspective; do not buy into the subtle lies of God’s enemy seeking to harm and to destroy.

Second, venom spreading throughout the body of a person bitten is deadly. Anger. Jealousy. Resentment. Nipping these common human emotions in the bud can keep them from spreading throughout our entire body, tainting negatively our every day life. The best anti-venom I know is prayer. Honest. Heartfelt. Whole-bodied. We pour out our poisonous feelings to the LORD before they spread like wildfire, damaging relationships, stealing our joy.

Third, all of us have these two things in common: we all are born and we all will die. Random tragedies occur. An uncommon, deadly snakebite. A serious allergic reaction to a bee sting. Weirdly, being struck by lightening. Unpredictable occurrences happen each day. We cannot guard ourselves against every possible threat. So let’s live life with an open heart, loving God and loving others, as long as the breath of the LORD fills our fragile lungs.

Make sure that when you eat and are satisfied, build pleasant houses and settle in, see…more and more money come in, watch your standard of living going up and up—make sure you don’t become so full of yourself and your things that you forget God, your God, the God who delivered you from…slavery; the God who led you through that huge and fearsome wilderness, those desolate, arid badlands crawling with fiery snakes and scorpions; the God who gave you water gushing from hard rock; the God who gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never heard of, in order to give you a taste of the hard life, to test you so that you would be prepared to live well in the days ahead of you,
Deuteronomy 8:14-16 (MSG),

Sue