A Possible Breakthrough Interpretation of Paul and the Viper’s Bite in Acts 28

I have just returned from a week of travel with a group of Jewish and Christian scholars following the final stages of Paul’s travel to Rome. Our tour started on Malta, the island on which Paul and his fellow travelers were shipwrecked (Acts 28:1). We traveled by boat to Syracuse (v.12), Rhegium (v.13), and Puteoli (v.13). We then transferred to a motor coach and visited the Forum of Appius and Three Taverns (v. 15) before ending our tour in Rome.

One of the most astonishing experiences on the trip was a demonstration on Malta of a possible explanation of why Paul did not die from the viper’s bite. As you will recall, Paul and all his party survived the shipwreck but arrived on Malta in a cold rain. As a welcome, the Maltese built a fire for them. After gathering a pile of brushwood, Paul was feeding the fire when a poisonous snake hidden in the brush fastened itself to Paul’s hand. Paul shook off the snake into the fire and, to the amazement of all, suffered no consequences from the snakebite. The superstitious among the observers assumed that Paul must have been a god because he did not swell up and die from the poisonous bite.

Our tour guide, Francis (who, by the way, was named after Pope Francis I), gave us a demonstration of a possible solution to the biblical event. He had a wooden box about 12 x 18 inches wide and 12 inches deep. He removed the top of the box and asked one of our fellow travelers, Isaac, to take out what was inside. Isaac peered inside and said there was nothing in the box. Antonio lifted the box, turned it upside down, and a rather amorphous glob that looked like the wood from which the box was made fell out on the pavement and immediately changed colors to look like the pavement. “Watch closely,” Antonio said. He then took a small bundle of sticks and placed the sticks on top of the flattened glob that could hardly be distinguished from the pavement. Almost immediately, the glob assumed the shape of a branch and changed colors again to blend in with its new surroundings. Francis said that this Mediterranean sea creature could very well have taken the shape of a branch, had attached itself to Paul when he picked it up, and was assumed by the observers to have been a viper. When Paul shook it off into the fire, no evidence remained to verify whether it had actually been a viper.

About all I could grasp from Francis’s explanation was that this creature was a protoplasmic organism from a branch associated with the octopus and squid families. Like the octopus, it can change its appearance to match its background but can also change its shape to match its immediate environment. It can assume a flat appearance like its background in the box or on the pavement, but it also can match the color and shape of rocks, branches, or other objects. Francis gave us a technical name for this creature. I think it was something like “impullingyourlegus.” Happy April Fools’ Day! (Feel free to “like” this on Facebook, but please don’t give away the joke.)

Poem: God's Work Today

      GOD’S WORK TODAY

Can God say yes if we say no?

      Can God go fast if we go slow?

Can God hear prayers we never say?

      Can He speak through His Word today

If all our time is work and play

      And busyness drives Him away?

Can God rid us of hate and greed

      If we will not acknowledge need?

Can He grant an unwelcomed cure

      For pride and its selfish allure?

Can God give life to one who clings

      To sin and to the death it brings?

Can God touch lives with loving care

      If we just stand aside and stare?

Can He mend broken hearts if we

      Cling to our own security?

Can God save those both far and near

      If we have closed our heart, our ear,

To His eternal mission plan

      To share His love in every land?

Will God have hands to do His works

      If each of us our duty shirks?

Will He be blinded by our eyes?

      Will ears be closed to human cries?

Will saving words be caught in throats?

      Will songs of praise sound sour notes?

What is the role we have to play

      In doing God’s work here, today?

The simple matter – surely true –

      God has no need for me and you.

Compared to Him we are so small;

      You’d think we wouldn’t count at all.

And yet, in His majestic grace,

      He chose us for this time and place.

He chose us to join others who

      Believe it matters what we do --

That when we act in faith and love

      A cloud of witnesses above

Will urge us on in life’s hard race

      Until we stand before God’s face

And hear Him tell us one by one,

      “Well done, my child, the race is won!”

     © Copyright 1999 Michael Fink

            All rights reserved

Treadmilling to the Mississippi

During Christmas week I had my third atrial fibrillation episode while visiting my elder daughter and her family in Nashville. The last episode occurred in April 2011 while I was vacationing in Virginia, and it took about 17 hours before the doctors could get my heart back in rhythm.

With the most recent episode, I was better prepared. For the last 21 months I have been carrying three pills around with me at all times. My instructions were to take these pills in the event of another episode. The pills worked. My heart was back in rhythm before I could awaken Evelyn and she could get dressed to drive me to the emergency room. We went to the emergency room at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville anyway. They monitored me for a couple of hours and sent me home. I visited my cardiologist this week, and he lowered my anxiety about these episodes. The fact that all of my occurrences have been in the middle of the night means that the episodes are not caused by stress. The beta blocker that I have been taking will continue for a while (at half the original dose), but it may not be necessary. The doctor is happy to have me carry around my three pills and use them whenever I might have another episode, and I don’t have to go to the emergency room unless the atrial fibrillation continues for more than 12 hours after I take my “magic pills.” He gave me an ongoing prescription for the pills and wants to see me semi-annually.

Such experiences always seem to stir up interest in improving your heart-health, which generally means getting more exercise. So, I’ve made a New Year’s resolution; and I’ve decided the best way to keep that resolution is to go “public” and maintain accountability to achieving my health goals. So here’s what I have decided as my plan this year. We’ve had a treadmill for a while, and I use it only occasionally. I decided to set a goal for using my treadmill regularly, and that plan is to walk the equivalent of following I-40 from Dandridge to the Mississippi River in Memphis this year. This week I’ve already walked the equivalence of going from my house to I-40 at Exit 415. Today I’m am about a mile from the Deep Springs exit at mile marker 412. I’ll be giving updates on Facebook as I “pass” various points of interest along the way. I hope you will help me maintain my accountability. If you don’t see an update of my progress for a spell, ask me how I’m doing. I’m determined to improve my overall health through exercise.

I expect that I might make it to Memphis before the end of the year. If I do, I’ll add on Dandridge to the North Carolina state line on I-40. If I can make that this year, next year I may set my goal of walking I-40 from one end of North Carolina to the other. If I can keep this up, my ultimate goal will be to follow I-40 all the way across the USA. Want to join me in this endeavor and make this a mutual exercise plan?

The Ant and the American Grasshoppers

With Social Security facing a long-range shortage because more people are retiring and less income is available to support retirees with inflation-based benefits, does it strike you as strange that both the President and the Republicans want to continue the reduction of "payroll taxes" (note that they don't talk about this being the funding for Social Security)? This short-term view (put a little more money in people's pockets now and leave the bankruptcy of Social Security for some miracle worker to solve in the future) is typical of our culture. This situation reminds me of Aesop's fable about the ant and the grasshopper, and we Americans are the grasshoppers!

A Moment of Grace in a Public Arena

I had an experience in the ninth grade that has made me especially conscious of failures in public places. In my case, I was selected to become a member of the Junior National Honor Society and was inducted into the Society during a student body assembly. As part of the induction ceremony, several of us were assigned to highlight the various aspects of the Honor Society’s values. We were to light a candle that symbolized the value and then give a short speech about that value.

When my turn came, I walked up to the table where the candles and matches were located. I struck the match, but I was so nervous that my hand began shaking as I reached out to light the candle. My hand shook so much that I couldn’t light the candle. The first match went out, and I had to light a second match. This time my hand shook even more. Finally I put my elbow down on the table, grabbed the match with both hands, and lit the candle. Of course, there was a loud wave of laughter that arose from the student body. I gave my short speech flawlessly, as I remember; but no one paid attention to the speech. All they remembered (and all that I can recall) was my difficulty in lighting the candle.

The next year in high school, one of my church friends was chaplain of the student body. She oversaw a morning meditation period before school each day. She asked me to speak at the morning meditation. Needless to say, I accepted reluctantly; and the memory of my embarrassment from the previous year soon seized my mind. I didn’t want to be laughed at again, and my anxiety began to rise. On the morning I was supposed to give the morning devotion, I woke up physically sick. I couldn’t get myself out of bed, and I persuaded my mother that I was too sick to go to school.

Fortunately I made it through that experience. In the next year or two I gained confidence and even gave a testimony before a large congregation in our church. The public embarrassment of that Honor Society assembly, however, has remained in my memory these many years.

This memory came flashing back in connection with my middle daughter’s recent marriage. My youngest grandson, Clay, is now six years old. He is bright and articulate; and somewhere in the planning for the wedding, Clay volunteered (or was enlisted) to give a brief recitation during the wedding. He marched in as the ring-bearer with the rest of the wedding party and then took his seat beside Evelyn on the second row on the bride’s side of the audience. In preparation for the wedding vows, the bride and groom moved up on a higher platform; and I was to signal Clay at that point to walk over to a microphone on the floor of the auditorium and give his brief recitation of a Mr. Roger’s song, “It’s You I Like.” To make his recitation a surprise for the bride, he hadn’t practiced during the rehearsal the previous evening; but he had both spoken and sung the part for us previously.

When I gave Clay his signal, he was just a little reluctant to move to the microphone. With a little encouragement, he walked over to it; but when he turned to face the congregation, you could sense the fear in his eyes. He stood there frozen, and I kept signaling him to go ahead. After a long hesitation, Clay walked away from the microphone toward the outside window aisle. He stopped there and stood frozen in place. With more encouragement, he moved finally back toward the microphone; but he still stood there frozen. And then came the moment of grace.

Diane, our youngest daughter and Clay’s mother, was the matron of honor in the wedding party. Grasping the situation, she came down off the platform and knelt down beside Clay to give him encouragement. When Clay was still reluctant to recite, she volunteered to say the piece with him. That seemed OK, and Diane began the recitation. Clay still said nothing. Diane, who probably had said the piece as often as Clay had, stopped as if she couldn’t remember what came next. Clay began to whisper the words into her ear so that she could recite the piece with him as the prompter. At one point she made a mistake (whether deliberately or not, I do not know); but Clay stopped her. He continued to whisper in her ear as she made the correction and then finished out the piece. Diane redeemed the situation. She acted with love for her precious son. She protected him from the embarrassment he would have experienced if left alone to fail. She gave him the opportunity to show that he knew the piece he was going to recite. She became his voice for a message he wanted to deliver to the bride—It’s you I like, just as you are. I love you for who you are.

Diane returned to the platform after the recitation, and Clay came back to sit with his grandmother and me. The moment of grace passed on to other moments of grace as the bride and groom gave their vows and became a new family together. I never have been prouder of my daughters—one who was wrapped in love by a new relationship and one who with love and grace rescued her son from an uncomfortable and potentially embarrassing situation. That is what grace is about--taking us from our moments of incapacitating fear and rescuing us with grace for another day, speaking the words of our hearts that we just can’t seem to vocalize on our own, wrapping us in loving arms that restore our confidence and gives us expansive opportunities for tomorrow.

And that is just a peek at what divine grace offers us.

Condemning the World

My technologically resistant wife has suddenly found a level of expertise since she got an Apple computer earlier this year. After we both installed Kindle Reader on our computers, she discovered that a lot of free books are available online. She began to scan various sites for free books, and she now receives regular emails listing a wide variety of books available for downloading without cost. She looks carefully at the description of the book; and if it looks interesting, she downloads it. Since we share our Kindle files, I now have access to a lot of books that I probably would not have looked at otherwise. I’ve ended up reading a wide variety of books, and many of them have been pretty good reads.

Right now I am reading a book by J. J. Hebert titled Unconventional (Mindstir Media USA). The book features a high school graduate, James, who works as a janitor in a school but who has a special gift for writing. He meets an upper-class Christian woman, Leigh; and they fall in love in spite of the objections of her parents. Her hyper-Christian parents make a quick judgment that he is far less than what their daughter deserves. They openly abhor him, and they do all they can to protect their daughter from making a monumental mistake. I’m at the point in the book where Leigh is sympathetically sharing the plan of salvation with James. I was stopped in my tracks when she testified, “The Book of John says this: ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.’”

The “God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world” took on a new meaning for me when I saw that statement in the context of the condemnation that the outsider James was receiving from Leigh’s parents. I suddenly was reminded that too much of our Christian witness is directed toward condemning the world, and too little of it is directed toward so loving the world that we are willing to sacrifice our very lives to show love rather than condemnation. I have read that “God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world” numerous times, but I never had thought of that statement in the context of the condemnation we subtly and sometimes not so subtly direct toward “the world” and the worldly.

We sometimes adopt the stance of “love the sinner, but hate the sin,” but even that places hate in parallel with love; and the sinner cannot see love in the condemnation of who the sinner is and what the sinner does. We need to rediscover that “the world through him might be saved” is most clearly seen in sacrificial love rather than in condemning judgment. Condemnation comes at the end when lack of faith in a loving God is the focus, not the sins that all us have committed. Our condemning attitudes may stand in the way of sinners discovering the compassing love revealed in Christ.

The Water of [My] Life

This past week has been a time that I have had water on my mind (not "water on my brain" fortunately). It started last week when my water bill arrived--the bill was 50% higher than it had ever been. After checking with my wife to make sure she hadn't been watering the garden or doing anything else that might have caused the increased consumption, I called the utility company. They suggested how I could determine if I had a leak between the water meter and the house, and they proved prophetic. We had a leak somewhere in the 90 feet from our water meter to our house's shut off valve.

Wednesday a plumber came by, assessed the situation, and gave me the price for putting in a new water line. I was tempted to let the leak go (80 months of the higher water bill was cheaper than installing a new water line--if the leak didn't get any worse). Being the good corporate citizen and conservationist that I am, however, I relented and approved the new water line. A couple of holes were dug in our yard Wednesday, anticipating the installation of the new line on Thursday.

I won't go into all of the details of Thursday's work. Let it be said that it took about 5 hours to dig a trench with equipment that should have done it in one hour. As darkness began to envelop us Thursday evening, I was about to give up hope that we would have water overnight. The plumber, however, was intent on "finishing up." He did--but he left behind a leak at the water meter, a trench that was shoddily refilled, a flowerbed that was devastated, and a corner of our downstairs bedroom in shambles (where he had ripped out the corner box that hid the water access and shutoff valve from view).

Friday morning, our utility company repaired the leak at the meter; and Friday afternoon and Saturday we were able to get the front yard and flower bed back in shape. I'm still contemplating how I'm going to repair the damage in the bedroom. I'm a pretty good handyman, but this project has some challenges (the box has to be attached to walls that have paneling over wallboard, furring strips, and a concrete block foundation; and the locations of the in-house water lines and shut-off valve interfere with a regular box structure). A project plan is stirring in my head, and my wife is hoping it won’t stir for too long.

To top it all off, this morning we discovered water leaking around the bottom of our refrigerator. When you interfere with your house's water system, it seems you invite other problems to visit you. No way was I going to call a plumber and take a chance on a wall in the kitchen being torn out. So “plumber Mike” attacked the problem. It turns out that a kink in the supply line had cause a crack in the line. The turning off and on of the water supply had resulted in a slow leak. A quick trip to the hardware store, and I was able to fix the leak for about a thousand times less than the cost of repairing the first leak and a hundred times less than a plumber surely would have charged to fix the refrigerator leak.

Now I have access again to safe water without much thought or concern. Of course, that is a privilege not available to millions of people in our world. I’m thinking maybe I should make a sizable donation to an organization that is addressing the issue of worldwide access to supplies of safe water—providing abundant cups of water in the name on the One who is the true Water of Life.