“THE SNAKE!”

Let me start off by saying that when it comes to snakes, you are more than welcome to call me a “Pansy”, “Momma’s Boy”, “A Girl” or anything else that you like and by all means I would probably call myself that as well. When it comes to snakes, there is only one emotion that I have for them – FEAR!

In September of 2011, I had the incredible privilege to take a missions trip with a very good friend of mine to Panama City, Panama. What an incredible place and experience the Lord allowed me to take part in. The excitement of finding out about this trip and the overwhelming pressure to get things packed and ready to leave in a very short time was unreal. Even though the excitement level was high and the thought of what God was going to allow us to experience, there was still this one thought running through my head over and over…I are going to Panama were there are snakes…VERY LARGE SNAKES! Even with this thought in the back of my head, off we went to Panama.

From the time we landed in Panama until the time we got on the plane heading back to the states, I was always doing at least one thing, watching out for snakes.

I am trying my best to become more of a reader in 2012 and the first book that I read was Mark Hall’s book “The Well” (Mark is the lead singer for a Christmas group called Casting Crowns). In one of the chapters, Mark is talking about how a lot of Christians are not prepared when temptation comes along. He says that, “if we haven’t talked to God for days or weeks, we won’t remember the sound of His voice when we encounter temptation or trouble. When we have to draw on what we learned six months ago to make a decision right now, we’re toast.” Mark goes on to call temptation for what I wish we could all see that it really is…A SNAKE! That is what it is or should I say, that is WHO it is. Why don’t we see temptation as a snake instead of something that is not so harmful to us? Mark goes on to say that he knows what snakes are and he just doesn’t pick them up. “But when I don’t draw from the WELL, I see the temptation and say, ‘A snaaaaaaakkee! He looks nice. See his colors? Isn’t he pretty? I think I will play with him’.”

On one particular day, in the middle of my missions trip, we traveled about 45 minutes upstream by canoe to a very remote village in the heart of the jungles of Panama. You guessed it, I was petrified that I was going to see a snake and there was no better place to see one than right where we were. We safely made it to the village and began our classes with some of the villagers. We had gotten settled into one of the huts and had begun our class when all of a sudden I heard the words that rocked me to the core…”BOA, BOA”. You better believe that my heart fell completely out of my chest at the sound of these words. Thank the Lord that this was a very small boa and it was on the  ground and I was about 15 feet off the ground in the top floor of one of the huts. I honestly believe that the main reason that I was startled so much was that I had gotten comfortable and stopped looking for snakes.