A Snake in Fairy Land
 |
| Silent, Docile- Dangerous |
“Mother, there’s a snake
in fairy-land!” yelled my daughters. They were out of breath, their feet
pounding over the wildflowers and soil to where I stood playing tetherball with
my son under the bright blue sky.
“What kind of snake?” I asked, reaching for the shovel,
grasping its long smooth handle and examining its sharp edge.
“It might be a rattlesnake, but it’s just a baby,” said
my oldest daughter, who at 6 years old, already knows a thing or two about
rattlesnakes.
“Let’s go see,” I say. I hope she is wrong. Perhaps it is
a beneficial snake- a king or a garter or a gopher.
She is not wrong. There, under the spreading juniper tree
surrounded by small boulders (an area of our property that my 4-year-old calls
fairy-land and where she often plays,) lay a tiny snake, coiled passively amid the soft
dirt, juniper berries and evergreen leavings.
I herded the children to a safe distance and quickly,
mercifully (I hope) cut the little snake into pieces with my shovel, aiming at
the neck beneath the diamond-shaped head. I did not stop slashing until I could
see that the head was cleanly severed from the body, still instinctively
opening and closing its dangerous mouth. The baby snake, probably newly
hatched, had meant my children no intentional harm. It was just lying there
peacefully. Killing it had been easier than killing a black-widow spider. I apologized to the little thing as I buried
it.
“I’m sorry, little snake. I know you were not
trying to harm my children. But you are a rattlesnake, and if you felt threatened,
you would have bit them. Maybe not today, but another day. It’s just your
nature.”
Later
as I sat under the porch, tired out by the sadness of killing the snake, and by
killing it, killing any future baby snakes it might have one day created, I reflected
on Genesis Chapter 3.
Genesis
Chapter 3 explains a great deal, if we have ears to hear. In the Genesis
account we find so much about why the world is the way that it is. Why must
women suffer in childbirth? Why must it require so much toil for humans to
wrest food from the earth? Why are there thorns and weeds? Why is nature
constantly warring against us?
And why
do we expect anything different? Just as soon as we think we’ve found
perfection again- there will always be a snake in Fairy-Land. There is always
be sin, contention, corrupt nature. No
humanistic, pagan, or scientific philosophy has the power to change that. No government of any kind can change it.
Genesis
Chapter 3 does not leave us without a ray of hope. In verse 14 (CSB Translation,)
it says,
I will put hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring.[d]
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.
“Hostility between you and
the woman.” Yes. There is definite hostility between this woman and any snake
who threatens my children.
“He will strike your head, and you will strike
his heel.” This verse is widely known as the “Protoevangelium,” and many
commentators believe that this part of verse 15 is the first mention of the
hope of a Messiah found in the Bible.
For those of us who have
accepted the Gospel of Jesus Christ and found forgiveness for our sins in His
death and Resurrection, this is very good news. Through the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, Satan, sin, and death have been defeated once and
for all.
However, the story is not
over yet. We still live in a fallen world where mothers must protect their
children from rattlesnakes (and worse.) The Bible has hope for that as well,
and fittingly, while the fall of man and all creation can be found in the first
book of the Bible, the restoration of all things can be found in the last book
of the Bible, Revelation.
Revelation Chapter 21 and
22 tells what the new heaven and new earth will look like once Christ has
returned and is seated on His throne,
Revelation
22:3 tells us, “There will no longer be any curse.”
What a
relief. What joy to think that a day will come when the curse from Genesis 3
caused by the sin of man and the trickery of Satan will finally come to an end.
We will finally return to being what we were created to be all along- sons and
daughters of God, living at peace with each other and with creation.
Will there
be snakes under the Tree of Life in the new creation? If there are, they will
be harmless, and my children can play with them like puppies. I will not have
to strike off their heads with a shovel.
Comments
Post a Comment