In sixty-five years I’ve had two close encounters with snakes. There is not the least interest on my part in repeating these two experiences.

On a family trip driving across Oklahoma, late at night my wife finally convinced me there was a snake in the car with us. I pulled alongside the highway and we quickly made our safe escape. With help from passing motorists (who kept the spirit of the Good Samaritan alive) the cotton mouth water moccasin was caught and (no, not released) executed.

While in Army basic training at Ft. Benning, Georgia in 1966, I jumped down into a fox hole, looked down and discovered I had intruded into the habitat of a coral snake. To this day, I cannot recall how I propelled myself out of the fox hole (loaded down with full combat gear and holding a loaded M-14). But I navigated that safe distance away from the predator. Then the Drill Sargent gave us an illustration – with the use of his side arm – that Solomon was right in Ecclesiastes 3:19.

I do not require or seek any additional encounters with those legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder, Serpentes.

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made,” (Gen. 3:1). The “craft” of this creeping thing is not like arts and crafts at Hobby Lobby. This is a robust but often unseen guile and shrewdness that knows exactly when to strike and how to kill. When this “craft” meets inattention, it wins! When this subtly encounters foolishness and slumber, the strike draws first blood.

By Warren E. Berkley
The Final Page
From Expository Files 19.11; November 2012

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