Spiders and Snakes

Christina Ryan is the reigning Mrs. Tennessee and is in Phoenix to compete in the Mrs. America Pageant. She was just getting ready to walk up an outside staircase at the resort hosting this weekend's competition when she saw a spider on a step. She instinctively jumped away from the spider… and onto a rattlesnake which bit her on the right foot. So she spent a day in the local hospital receiving ten vials of antivenin. She’s fine now… except that she has to walk in high heels in the pageant on a very swollen right foot.

There’s gotta be a metaphor for life in there somewhere! Just when you think you’ve got the spiders beat, up pops the rattlesnake! It’s just like Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “It’s always something!”

This story made me think of Jim Stafford’s 70’s hit song “Spiders and Snakes.” More seriously, it also made me think of Amos 5:18-20—

It will be as though a man fled from a lion
only to meet a bear,
as though he entered his house and rested his hand on the wall
only to have a snake bite him.
Will not the day of the LORD be darkness, not light—
pitch-dark, without a ray of brightness?

Amos describes the smug, self-satisfied and materialistic Israelite who looked forward to the “Day of the Lord” because they thought this would be the time when God would destroy their enemies and give victory to Israel. The Day of the Lord was the time of God's judgment, but it would be directed at them! God would hold them accountable for their sin, and they would not escape His wrath. It would be as though they ran from a lion right into a bear, and then escaped only to be bitten by a snake in their own house. They would not get away. God tells his people that when His day came, in the immortal words of Rambo, “I coming for you!”

OK, besides pegging the meter for references to 70’s pop culture, what is the point here? Actually, Amos makes it rather plainly, doesn’t he? True, eternal safety exists only for the people of God… and only as they live like the people of God. We can’t buy God off with the right rituals and church done “decently and in order.” God is looking for hearts that beat for Him and lives that are lived for Him. Amos continues (Amos 5:21-24) with what for me is some of the most dramatic words of the Old Testament—

"I hate, I despise your religious feasts;
I cannot stand your assemblies.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them
Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!