No Time for Grace
We’ve had countless unwanted visitors, but I wonder if there might have been another option for ushering the last one out. We have never played baseball, but we always had a bat. That day the bat took on a new role.
I shudder not knowing where that visitor came from or how long he lurked about the house. Did he move silently between the shadows while we slept? Did his eyes track me as I moved from room to room? Even now, when I think about it, prickles going down my spine.
The last bell sounded at school and a mob of gleeful students surged out of the building towards their homes. That’s when the intruder was discovered.
I remember it clearly.
I’d been hanging clothes on the line outside and entered the bedroom through its backdoor. Crossing the room, something caught my eye.
I noticed a cord-like thing scrunched under the bookshelf and jerked myself to a halt. I supposed it to be a length of cord spilt from my sewing box— but it lay kinked into unnatural angles with neither end visible. I stepped forward, thinking I should go and put it away before someone tripped over it. But old worries resurfaced.
Was this cord NOT a cord? I refused to let that thought finish itself; I wouldn’t allow the word snake into my head. We’d had so many of them in the past, but please, not now! This is a new house. We’d lived here for only 4 years. We’ve had lizards and some mice in the inner rooms, and yes, there were a couple snakes in the storage room, but nothing that could lift its head, turn, and… look back at me.
“Ugh!”
It was tracking me!
“Yip!” I yelled, and a second later, “Yip! Yip! Yip!”
When my husband rushed toward the bedroom I yelled, “Don’t come in! Get help! It’s a snake.”
Yip told me to get on the bed. “No, I want to keep my eyes on it.” I stood stock still and stared at the cord that wasn’t a cord.
Still in their school uniforms and backpacks, a troop of 6 eager school boys stormed the bedroom with sticks and gardening tools; their eyes searching the floor (except the new boy who was more interested in my bedroom).
I took this chance to jump on the bed. Yip carried an iron baseball bat until one of the boys heroically relieved him of it, determined to be his protector. Yip doesn’t shrink from snakes and has a history of dispatching dozens. But, in a fatherly spirit, he allowed the boys to take over.
Sumit, the oldest, directed the boy with the bat. “Arnav, it’s in the corner; pinch it down and pull it out.”
Arnav trapped the snake, pinning it beneath the bookshelf. I held my breath as he carefully dragged it out, onto the open floor. As he did, the snake reared back its head, opening its balloon shaped hood, revealing beautiful, black and white diamond-images. Everyone stared at this remarkable creature. I was captivated by its beauty, only waking up to myself when Arnav matter-of-factly announced, “Cobra.”
Trapped, the cobra swayed its upright body back and forth, trying to hypnotize us with a head-bobbling dance. Sumit took over pinning it down, telling Arnav to smash its head.
Thus, the uninvited guest came to an end.
My feelings surprised me. I felt guilty and sad. As a group we had, without discussion, come to one undisputed decision: murder. He’d come to my house uninvited. So why did I feel guilty?
The snake didn’t know the danger it was in when it sought shelter in my house. It was, as we are sometimes, in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was no moment for the cobra to say, “Excuse me, I can’t find the exit?”
We humans are capable of extending grace, patience, and forgiveness with each other, even when it’s hard. When the cobra entered my house, there was no mercy or thought for negotiation. Our safety came first.
The dangerous cobra was so beautiful and died so innocently, it made me think of Christ—His life and death, His love and forgiveness; full of grace. A process that doesn’t come naturally. He lived, and died, and showed us how to do it. When it came to the cobra, grace wasn’t even an option.
The cobra died for our safety. Christ died to save us. Both were beautiful.
On Shishya campus, where I live, our motto is Living in Love. It can’t be done without forgiveness. Love and forgiveness are continually a work in progress, always under construction.
It reminds me of the epitaph Ruth Graham requested for her gravestone:
End of Construction. Thank you for your patience.
The snake came in 2025, in 2026 there will be more stories, more heartaches, and more reasons to forgive.
Be ready for 2026.