What is happening: Lois found a big, black snake in her chicken house. Ken was able to cut it in half with a shovel. They had the tail half, but they could not see the head half. Would it regenerate a tail and threaten the chickens again?
Early in the morning, I was going to go out and open up the chicken house doors so the chickens could play and eat in their yards, but the thought voice said, “Not yet, Lois, do not let your chickens out yet.” Okay, that was no problem.
I read my Bible and claimed some wonderful Bible promises, and a little later, the thought voice said, “Lois, you may go out now.”
I was always happy to greet my pets in the morning, so I went quickly to let them out. Half way across the back yard, I noticed a long, black strip of something lying on the ground in the south chicken yard. The snake!
I ran back into the house, shouting, “Ken, the snake is in the south chicken yard!” He immediately ran outside, grabbing the same shovel he had used the night before, and within seconds he was in the south yard. I was close behind him. He nudged the snake. It barely moved; it was still alive but certainly not very active.
Ken made sure, with his trusty shovel, that this snake’s head and heart were separated. He threw the three-foot long top half of the snake into the woods, where he had thrown the three-foot long tail of the snake. We never had another snake in our chicken house or yards. There was peace in the whole neighborhood.
I learned many lessons from this experience:
- God will guide us, and it is good to listen and obey Him.
- God loves all the creatures, and He likes to see them safe and happy.
- We can pray about anything, no matter how trivial it may seem.
- If we go where we should not go and do what is bad, we will be in trouble.
- We can lose our lives by going where we do not belong.
The last two lessons are about the snake. I want to tell you about this snake. It was no stranger to our neighborhood. It had the bad habit of going into my neighbor John’s chicken house, sticking its head right underneath a setting hen and stealing and eating her eggs. It would take one each day.
It got so bad that in order to have some baby chicks, John brought me eggs for my hens to sit on and hatch! Since there were no more eggs in John’s chicken house, the snake just thought it might find eggs in our chicken house!
If this big, black snake had been satisfied to eat mice and rats in the woods where he belonged, he would still be alive and enjoying life. Now, do you think we enjoyed killing this snake? No way! We do not like to kill anything. And besides, non-poisonous snakes are beneficial—if they stay where they belong!
When you are tempted to go where a Christian should not go and do what a Christian should not do, always remember that you could lose your life—spiritually as well as physically—just as this snake lost its life when it went where it should not have gone.