In the midst of March Madness, I find myself unexcited about basketball. It’s not that I have a disdain for the sport. It’s just that my fire gets lit by sports that take place more in the out of doors. Snake hunting is a good example. Growing up in Pendleton, we always knew of a few backroad avenues that were ripe for hunting rattlesnakes. On a warm summer evening, we’d pile into the rig with a lot of friends and a few good garden hoes, and we’d prepare for battle. As we trekked out below the rimrock of Reith Road, our headlights would find dozens of good sized rattlers lying out on the asphalt. We would constantly argue as to whether they were cooling themselves off or warming themselves up, but either way, they had ultimately found themselves a spot that made them easier prey for a bunch of young men with nothing better to do. We tended to be fairly tuned up in the art of killing snakes. The proper technique consisted merely of walking quietly toward one of the basking reptiles, hoe held high, and quickly and precisely bringing the metal head down just behind the snake’s ears. (Whether the snake really has ears or not was always truly irrelevant to me. That part of his head looked like a good spot for ears, so that was the anatomical label I adhered.) In most cases, the snake’s head would stay put, and the rest of the critter would slowly flex, coil, and roll. At that point, the hunter could pick up the body, leave the head, and throw the kept half into a bucket for later use, whatever that might be. At one point, I had taken my buddies, Ben Louis and Jason Havens with me on a snake hunt. Ben, a Canadian, was not altogether familiar with the sport of snake hunting. Jason, a Clarkston, Washington native, was all too familiar. We loaded up a couple of garden hoes and headed for Reith. The night was ripe for snake hunting. The asphalt had a haunting array of snakes lying across it, and the headlights on Jason’s van lit them up like comets across a black sky. We parked and got out to begin the hunt. As I was wielding the True Value Snake Slayer, I cautiously approached what appeared to be a juvenile boa. I lifted the hoe into the air, and just as I was getting ready to lower the guillotine, a rock flew with the accuracy of a 30-06 and landed squarely in the middle of the snake’s head. Direct hit. First kill of the night. Jason had honed his giant killing rock chunking skills in the breaks of the Snake River, and they had come in handy to impress me that night. He continued to bean snakes in the bean, while I continued to behead them with my mom’s garden hoe. All the while, though, one snake hunter had been missing. Ben had been sitting on the edge of the van’s back seat watching the carnage with a grin on his face. I hollered at him, “Come on, Ben. Get out here.” It became obvious that he had been gripped by a paralyzing fear of the diamondbacked critters. He was not about to have any part of it. Of course, after a great deal of ribbing, he gave in. I took the hoe and showed him the proper technique. His bravery was mustered, and he walked cautiously toward a slumbering snake. Upon arrival, he brought that hoe into the air with the intensity of one of those dudes from Braveheart with the blue face and the dress. As Ben brought the hoe down, his intensity increased to that of Wolfman Skoal. Simultaneously, the snake’s and the garden hoe’s heads disconnected and took flight. Ben swung and swung, beating the already dead snake with his hoe handle. Jason and I, torn between laughing and concern, calmed Ben down, took the handle from him, and walked his emotionally distraught shell back to the van. We laughed so hard we cried. Then we looked for the head to my mom’s new garden hoe. Although the story makes me laugh, it also reminds of how we sometimes flail around in life. We chase this thing and that thing trying to find peace or happiness or even a life of ease and pleasure, and nearly all of them give us nothing more than a broken hoe and a little damage to our psyche. In reality, we only have to do one simple thing, with the same precision it takes to bring a hoe down behind a sleeping snake’s ears. That one simple thing is to take up our cross and follow Jesus. Where he leads, we simply need to follow. He won’t lead us astray. He won’t get us bit. That doesn’t mean it will be easy. As a matter of fact, we’re promised it won’t be. If our prayers aren’t getting answered, it doesn’t mean we don’t have enough faith. It simply means that they aren’t being answered, today. Look at Mary and Martha. They prayed that Lazarus wouldn’t die, and he did. But look at the amazing miracle that came because of it. That’s what we’ve got to realize. God’s not leaving us to get bit. We don’t have to flail around. We just need to make one simple stroke and that’s a move toward the heart of Jesus. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 03:42:42 +0000