Tuesday, March 24, 2026
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Snakebit
I am going away and you will look for me,
but you will die in your sin.
Where I am going you cannot come.
I hear Jesus saying this, and do I fall deep into the pit of despair? He is going, going, gone. What now is there to live for? Where will there be beauty, or goodness or truth? Where will there be anything but dragons? But … no. I decide to buck up.
I can’t handle the truth. I’ve been snakebit, and I don’t let myself grieve or fall down on my face, lost. I begin to imagine and then plan and then set up my “action items” for replacing the presence of Jesus with what I think must be God’s presents to me. It will be OK. I’m great, I’m God’s kid, just look at me. Who needs Jesus?
I’ve been snakebit.
Even on good days I tentatively approach these lies. On bad days, I eat them, swallow them, and don’t even notice how I’m retching and nearly dead. I don’t remember that I had once followed Christ the Resurrected. And if I begin to remember, I shut my eyes and shut my mind. I hear echoes but close my ears to the cry of an old Me far more desperate than I can now allow myself to be.
Oh, Lord I believe. O God, help my unbelief! These old words fade away into a wretched distance. And in the darkness after midnight, I hear myself snarl and bare my teeth. I’m afraid, but I will be fierce and fight whatever it is that’s after me. I can do this.
I am afraid! But what is there to be afraid of? The snakes writhe and curl around each other, and they are beautiful. They sing to me, promise me peace. The snakes offer me all there is I could ever want. I am compelled to reach down and touch their silky skins. And then, oh God, I am snakebit!
Search and destroy, never surrender. Isn’t that what drove Spencer Tracy, looking for victory over evil, inviting, inviting, confident he could withstand? But as respectable Doctor Jekyll changed into Mr. Hyde night after night, he lost control, and then oh, how he snarled! He could see nothing except through the devil’s eyes.
Toward the end of the movie Doctor Jekyll is trapped. Mr. Hyde has been hounded and identified and chased into the doctor’s laboratory. He barely has time to transform into the doctor before the crowd bursts in. Out of breath, he looks away and points the crowd to the door. He went that way!
But alone among the crowd, his best friend calls him out, loves him and insists that he speak truth. As Jekyll cries his lie over and over, I’ve done nothing wrong, I’ve done nothing wrong, I’ve done nothing wrong! Hyde slowly appears. His hair is ragged, his eyes are bloodshot, Jekyll becomes the crashing, terrible, snarling Mr. Hyde one last time. The doctor is found out, attacks his friend who looks at him, loves him, and  shoots him three times. Hyde falls dead. In some versions of the film, Jekyll’s butler quietly begins to intone the 23rd Psalm.
The Lord is my shepherd …
In AA groups around the world this drama is acted out day after day, by one alcoholic after another. And not just in AA, all of us will struggle against the lie that we are OK, we can handle the truth, we can live without a savior. We are snakebit. But the poison in our system cannot withstand confession.
Who will rescue me from this body of death!
I can’t do this!
God can!
I think I’ll let him!
And then the snakes stop snarling. Jesus stares them down, they lose their power. In this simultaneous moment of awareness and surrender, I no longer have anything to fear. I breathe deep again. I can rest. And weep. And wait as the touch of Jesus changes me into the human being my Father made me to be.
Then Jesus said to them,
“When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM.
The one who sent me is with me.
He has not left me alone …
And me too?
I am not alone?
And you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
(Numbers 21, Psalm 102, John 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
