It started in the gardens behind our home in East Africa and ended in the front seat of our Ford Cortina. Somehow in my youthful foolishness I caught a seven foot long cobra and asked my wife to drive me to our school’s biology room. I was pretty cool about it until, there in the small confines of the car, it began to struggle with me. While holding it behind the head with one hand I tried to stop its thrashing about on my lap inches from my wife with my other hand. As we pulled up to the school it relaxed but I did not. Beads of anxious sweat ran down my face. It was only when putting it in the biology room box did I understand its battle. It was dead. It had been thrashing for the precious air I was not allowing it to have. It was the only thing I have ever strangled. But perhaps not the only thing I have ever deprived of life, at least eternal life.
Paul speaks of being a stumbling block. “Be careful, however, that the exercise of your freedom does not become a stumbling block to the weak.” I Corinthians 8:9. So often we talk about people approaching us in heaven and thanking us for encouraging them. But what of those we have discouraged? As a teacher I wonder how often I flipped off a causal remark to be funny but actually deeply hurt a student. What persons decided they didn’t want to be in heaven if we are there?
I once heard someone say if he had to live his life over again he wouldn’t do anything differently. I thought, “What a fool. He learned nothing along the way.”
Written by Roger Bothwell on January 14, 2013
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org