Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?” Proverbs 6:27-28
That’s gotta be one big earthworm. It was a great spring morning. Judy and I were living in Cobden, Illinois and over the years we had put together a really, beautiful yard. Judy can visualize how something is going to look and then has the knack to make it grow. I do the grunt work. I’m the yard man and she is the architect. That day we were putting some mulch around the flower beds.
Our yard had a retaining wall at one of the front corners and the yard sloped in that corner. I would mulch leaves (we had four large maple trees) and put them there in the fall. Then next spring we would use it as free (and I love free) mulch. I would take my trusty pitchfork and our oversized trash can down to the corner, fill up the can and take it to wherever she wanted it dumped. Then we would spread it out. Great plan. Beautiful day. All is well. And then he showed up.
I went to the corner, loaded up the can, brought it to the middle of the yard to one of our flower beds and where she said dump it. I dumped it. I was about to use the pitchfork to start spreading the mulch when I noticed the tip of an earthworm barely sticking out of the mulch. In order to appreciate this you need to know that earthworms, in Judy’s eyes, are held in very high regard. It’s something about they aerate and loosen up the soil making it better for the flowers. I thought they were just fish bait. Silly me.
“Hey, there’s an earthworm” Judy exclaimed with the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning. “Grab him and put him in the garden.” So, hey, I’m just the grunt man so I reached down and pulled on the little fella. The little fella didn’t move. I looked at Judy with a quizzical look. My thought was that if he wanted to stay that bad, he could just go with the next pitchfork load. No…that wasn’t gonna happen. So, I gave it another shot, and this dude wasn’t moving. “Poud (that’s Judy’s nick name) this guy isn’t coming.”
I took matters to the next level and took the pitchfork and shoved it into the mound around the earthworm and gave it a lift and a flip. Well, shoot that thing, there was a stinking snake. It wasn’t some innocent “let me aerate your soil” earthworm it was a 14 foot boa constrictor. Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration. But it was a snake, it was about two feet long and it was moving and so was I. Now both Judy and I were a lot younger then, but even for our age we were out of there! And I do believe the grunt man outran the pretty little architect.
You ask, “What kind was it?” Don’t know. Don’t care. There are only two kinds of snakes—living and dead and this one was definitely alive. Honestly, I have blocked out what happened next. I can’t tell you if we went back and he was gone. I can’t tell you if I got a shovel and in pure self-defense ended the life of the slithering creature or what. I can only tell you that he was no longer a threat and I never, and I mean never, looked at the pile of mulch in the same way.
If I learned anything that day…and trust me I did…it was to be careful what you decide to pull on because things are not always as they seem. Ask Eve. The Genesis account of creation and the fall of man says that the serpent (that’s Bible code for snake) was “more crafty” than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. The Hebrew language implies that the snake was beautiful, appealing. Intrigued she decided to strike up a conversation with him. “Bad idea, Eve.” Just run. But no, she didn’t, and now we have this messed up world and it was all because Eve grabbed a hold of something she should have left alone.
There’s an old tale about a man who was walking up a mountain and it was getting cold. The man saw a rattlesnake and the snake said, “Please put me in your coat and take me down the mountain.” The man said, “No way, you will bite me.” The snake assured him he would not. He picks the snake up, puts it in his coat and goes down the mountain. As the temperature rises the snake gets a little more frisky, and bites the man. The man, shocked, says, “You said you wouldn’t bite me.” And the snake replied, “You knew what I was when you picked me up.” So true. So tragically true.
The Bible also says this, “Can a man carry fire next to his chest and his clothes not be burned? Or can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be scorched?” “What does that mean?” you ask. It means the next time a snake wants to strike up a conversation, run. It means the next time you are tempted to sin, run. It means the next time your wife wants you to grab the tail of an oversized earthworm, run. No…it doesn’t mean that, but it does mean be sure you know what you are grabbing before you take hold.
Fortunately, our Abba Father knows all about snakes and sin and grabbing hold when we shouldn’t. He also loves us enough to give us wisdom to know the difference. James, the half-brother of Jesus, wrote, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God.” With wise counsel like that we don’t have to fear oversized earthworms or the other stuff we are living through right now. No, we can rest in Him. He’s got this. Bro. Dewayne
Grits with Grace 