Yellow Fly Paper – II

Uncle Jake and Aunt Freda lived in three houses that I recall; the first two had yellow fly paper. They also had exterior asphalt siding that was made to look like brick.

This is not the pattern that Uncle Jake’s houses had, but maybe it helps you get the idea – what you’re looking at is really asphalt single siding.

While Uncle Jake worked for a local town, he also raised corn, hogs, and had a cow or two and chickens. I recall going out to his place with my Dad on hog butchering day. I don’t recall much about hog butchering, but I do remember huge cauldrons of boiling water – did they put the butchered hogs in them? I don’t know, it’s just one of those childhood images without much detail.

On one visit to Uncle Jake’s my cousin Franklin and I got into a sling-shot battle with my brother Bill and Franklin’s brother Tuck. The thing about this particular sling-shot battle, for we had more than one during my boyhood, was that Bill and Tuck pined Franklin and me down in the hog pen. I still can see us peering through the slats in the hog pen, trying to figure out how to get a shot off against the opposition. Thankfully the hogs were in a docile mood that day – otherwise we would have found ourselves between the sling-shot rocks and the hog place.

There were always woods in proximity to Uncle Jake’s houses and we used to explore the woods on every visit. We’d climb trees and rocks and just enjoy the outdoors. The first two houses had outhouses, which were a novelty to a suburban boy; they also had outdoor water pumps operated by hand. The third house had indoor plumbing – no novelty there.

In the woods around the second house where Uncle Jake and Aunt Freda lived were a cluster of huge boulders that we called, The Big Rocks; has an original ring to it don’t you think? Climbing The Big Rocks was always part of a visit’s itinerary. On one visit as we neared the base of the biggest of The Big Rocks one of us shouted, “Snake!” Off we went, running for the house as fast as our legs could carry us. I guess we thought it might be a centipede snake capable of doing 60 miles per hour and that we’d be caught and swallowed at any moment.

The thing is, I don’t recall actually seeing a snake. Not that there wasn’t one, but even if there had been a snake it couldn’t have caught us – yet we ran. Of course we were kids, and the idea of a faster-than-lightening snake introduced adventure into our day; but I wonder how often adults holler, “Snake!”, and then act the same way minus the adventure?

If the news media didn’t holler “snake!” everyday who would watch it? If Rush Limbaugh and company, whether from the right or the left, didn’t holler “snake!” everyday who would listen? If some “Christian” radio networks and preachers didn’t yell, “snake!”, who would send their money?

If politicians didn’t look at their opponents and scream “snake!” they might have to actually think about exercising thoughtful leadership rather than invoking fear and visceral reactions.

How often do we run from things we don’t see but believe because someone else has hollered “snake!”? Once our imaginations grab hold of the equivalent of a snake they are loath to let it go. But if we would examine the snake maybe it wouldn’t be a threat after all. Maybe it wouldn’t even be there; if there maybe it wouldn’t be the threat we are told that it is.

It’s amazing that God has managed to hold this world together for so long considering all the snakes we are told threaten our existence. It’s downright incredible that Christ has been able to maintain and protect His Church in the face of all the dire threats that we are told will soon destroy the Church. How did we manage to make it for so long? Snakes here and snakes there – what’s one to do?

In the Gospel of John Jesus says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life,” John 3:14 – 15. This is a reference to Numbers 14:1 – 9 in which the people of Israel complain against God and Yahweh sends fiery serpents among the people.

“Then Yahweh said to Moses, Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.”

Could it be that when there are indeed snakes among us, whether of our own doing or not, that the main thing is to keep the main thing as the main thing – looking to Jesus Christ and Him alone for salvation and wholeness? Folks hawk substitutes for Jesus, I’m sure I’ve done it myself; good Christian folk hawking substitutes for Jesus, good-looking substitutes, good substitutes, but substitutes nonetheless.

God hasn’t called us to live lives of shouting “snake!” or lives of running from snakes, real or imagined; He has called us to live life in intimate relationship with His Son, Jesus Christ. We can live in that relationship because Jesus was lifted up on a Cross, becoming sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

“And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived,” Numbers 21:9.