Yesterday I walked down to our mailbox to collect the mail. There was an alumni magazine from my doctoral university so I started reading through it on my way back home. Being spring and Florida, I was wearing flaps (sandals). As I stepped onto the walk that leads to my front door I felt something rubbery under the front of my foot. I looked down, jumping back a bit as I did, to see a large black snake. My first fleeting thought was that it was a toy snake but I knew we didn’t have any and then it quickly slithered away to repair its dignity under some bushes. I always enjoy seeing snakes so I ran inside to call out my family to come look at the snake I stepped on. It was a Coluber constrictor priapus, also known as a southern black racer (because of their speed). These black racers are not poisonous, they can be feisty though so I was glad it did not bite me (I was in flaps so my foot was out in the open), as deserving of a bite I might have been. I shooed the snake away from our front door and it hurriedly slithered away, looking like it was thankfully uninjured.
This experience has direct gospel applications. I wasn’t watching where I was going and ended up stepping on a snake. I we are not careful in life and continuously mindful of where we are going we can step into dangerous situations. Life requires concentration and focus on our destination. even if we do not do anything wrong, we can end up somewhere where we do not want to be.
Note: snakes aren’t bad even if they terrify many people, I’m just taking a little license here and comparing it to something bad.