God Killed a Snake

Submitted by Sharon Pedigo

When I was a young girl, my parents bought a farm south of here.  I was in 4^th grade, my brother Wayne was in 5^th.  In Nov the pecans were ready to be picked up, but there were too many dead limbs under the big pecan tree.  One day Mother put Wayne and me to work clearing out those limbs. Now it was hard work, but mainly I didn’t like doing it because it was just so boring, picking up the dead branches and going back and forth between the tree and the gully dragging and carrying the limbs. Little did I know that job was going to be anything, but boring. Wayne had drug a big limb into the gully and I was a few steps behind when he stopped dead still and yelled get the gun!  At our house that was short for there’s a snake.  I shot off to the house yelling for mother to get the gun.  Daddy was at work.  She quickly loaded the 22 with 2 bullets and we were back at the gully in a flash.  Wayne was still frozen and had not moved a muscle.  She took one shot at the coiled up rattler and missed. She aimed again with her only bullet left, and hit it just below the head. It rattled as it spun up in the air a bit and fell dead. Turned out it was a 4ft velvet tailed rattler, very rare around here and the only one we ever saw.  Daddy was so proud of Mother he took that snake the next day out to the drilling rig where he worked to show all the men he worked with. She had never even shot a gun before we moved there 3 months earlier.

 

Now I’ve thought about that day a lot of times through the years.  That snake, because of his nature was coiled and ready to strike.  He was not a friend.  Wayne, probably with everything in him wanted to turn and run, but we had both been drilled over and over if we ever came upon a snake that was ready to strike do not move, stay absolutely still.  Wayne was helpless in that moment.  He could not do anything to save himself.  I could not save him.  I could only get Mother, but even she had no power to actually stop that snake from striking Wayne.  She said it was God that killed that snake. 

 

Truth is we all need a Savior.  According to the Bible all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  That just means He is Holy and our sin separates us from Him.  God does not just overlook sin anymore than Wayne could have just ignored that snake.  Sin ultimately brings death, eternal death, eternal separation from God. We cannot save ourselves. God made a way for us to be saved and have eternal life with Him.  Quote John 3:16.  Not long before the day that God killed that snake in the gully, I trusted in Jesus Christ to be my Savior.  I knew I needed forgiveness and I wanted to belong to Him. He forgave my sin and I surrendered my life to Him. I have eternal life through Jesus Christ.  He has never left me.