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Printer Friendly VersionWhat a gorgeous time of the year! It is the time for new life
to be forming in the world. The maple tree that we planted last year has budded
and we are looking forward to the next few weeks. Last year, during later
April or early May right after we planted our tree, we found a robin’s
nest in it at about seven feet off the ground. For the next few weeks we enjoyed
getting a ladder and peeking in to see, first the eggs and then the chicks,
as they grew and developed. With the help of some neighbor kids our family
also located a large toad as well. It is that time of year where we see wildlife
coming out almost daily.
Last week, as I was thinking about this time of year, I was
remembering a story that I read last spring. The author is Annie Dillard,
a Christian. Several years ago, she took a year and lived near a creek and
watched what she saw. Her essays on creation are in her book called Pilgrim
at Tinker Creek.
One of the first stories she tells is of the joy of walking
along the edge of a pond and watching and listening with great interest to
the elegant freedom of the frogs as they jumped out of the hidden places along
the bank, each one yelling a froggy “yikes!” and splashing into
the water1. Dillard found a frog that simple sat at the edge of the water
and appeared to drain out of its skin2.
I’ve seen that happen before, but not on the bank of a
pond. When I walk, all the frogs just seem to jump into the water, and I’m
too dense to notice the ones that don’t jump. No, it has been in other
places out in the world of men and women. Walking through life watching people
dart here and there, sounding off, taking care of business and doing what
they need to do in order to make a big splash. I am learning to look a little
more closely and see what makes people jump, but every once in a while, I
see a person who has no jump left.
You’ve seen it before. The vigor in their life just seems
to deflate right before your very eyes. A lot of times you can tell by their
eyes. At first their eyes may become wider and brighter. They are compensating
for what is going on; but before too long, the light that used to be there
is gone. Things begin to go dull. The changes are subtle. The people around
them may be jumping around and making all kinds of noise, but they are still,
silent, just slowly dying and no one really knows what is going on below the
surface. Annie Dillard knew. She explained it. A giant bug was just behind
the frog. This bug bits its victim, makes a puncture and then uses “poisons
that dissolve the victim’s muscles and bones and organs--all but the
skin--and through it the water bug sucks out the victim’s very life
leaving nothing but a shell” 3. Isn’t nature lovely?
The psalmist describes his plight by saying, “The snares
of death encompassed me, the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me” (116: 3,
NRSV). If your Bible says “sorrows,” that is one of the translations
of the word, but the word more often is translated in scripture as the word
“snares.” In the Old Testament, the idea of death meant what we
mean by death and the place of the dead was Sheol. But it also included the
concept that death invaded this life and made relationship impossible. The
psalmist was caught in a snare, a trap of death, but was technically still
alive.
Paul was a college sophomore. He was a pretty good student,
but his grades began slipping. He was well liked in high school and made friends
quickly in the dorm, but he was spending more and more time alone and people
were less and less attracted to him. Where interaction was concerned he just
started staying on the bank of the river. It was very subtle, most of us didn’t
even notice it. We were too busy trying to jump in and make big splashes ourselves.
He had been caught in the living trap of pornography. Once he
was bitten, he couldn’t tear himself away from it. The poison entered
his brain and body and dissolved any backbone he had to stand up to the addiction.
When he was around people, he was sure that somehow they knew, or would find
out. It had trapped him and was slowly separating him from his friends, and
was already working destruction on the family that he would later start. Isolating
him, separating him, slowly but surely bringing death into his life. He had
spent almost three years silently hoping someone would find out and help set
him free. No one who knew him could see it. He was just another frog on the
bank, another guy in the dorm. But the magazines and the pictures were a shadow
under the surface that was literally sucking the life out of him while he
sat silent.
Sabrina’s husband was a successful small business owner
who worked long hours. While trying to raise a couple of teenagers, keeping
up with the financial books of the business and spending a lot of time alone,
she was ready to try something that would help her to shake the blues. She
learned that she could order prescription drugs on the internet. At first,
she perked up. Her eyes brightened. Before long, she was hooked, trapped.
As the days and weeks wore on, it paralyzed her life. She could do nothing
without trying to work an angle to get more. She hid money from her husband
and diverted money from the business. He was so busy he never noticed the
changes in her. He didn’t look into her eyes often enough to notice
when they went dull. The guilt became so intense. All she wanted was freedom
from the snare that had caught her and separation from the parasite that was
literally sucking the life out of her. Silently she suffered distress and
anguish, fearing (but also hoping) for the day when her husband would find
out and help her get free. She just couldn’t tell him. So she sat silent,
caught in a hideous snare that was just under the surface, destroying her
from the inside.
Jack was snared as a very young boy. The family used to leave
him in the care of his uncle. He knew what his uncle was doing to him was
wrong, but he had no idea how to bring up the abuse to his family. It went
on for years. His uncle must have realized that Jack was getting old enough
to tell someone because he quit, but the damage had been done. Jack’s
body and brain had been poisoned and was being devoured by memories that were
killing him from the inside out. Those memories proved to be a snare that
prevented him from jumping in anywhere. Relationships were impossible for
him. From what you could see, he looked normal enough; just another frog on
the bank, if a little distracted or dull. But under the surface, he was trapped,
slowly being killed by something that happened 20 years ago. He endured it
in silence.
Pornography, addiction, abuse, I could go on forever telling
stories of people who are caught in some kind of snare. The truth is, there
are so many potential snares in the world, the list is endless. In other places
the psalmist says a lying tongue is a snare, idols are a snare, and fear of
others is a snare.
It also says, “Let their table be a snare” (69:22).
I was thinking about that one. Let their table be a snare. I think that is
partly because of what is said around a table. But you know your table can
also be a snare if you are still trying to shed the extra 10 pounds you gained
over the holidays. Your doctor may have told you, that your table may be a
snare, and threatens your health or even your life.
What is really amazing is what we will do in order to get ourselves
out of those things. I grew up in farm country. The farm kids around my home
town would trap small animals for fur or for sport, sometimes to keep them
away from livestock. The psalmist would have known about a rope snare. A more
modern version of a snare is a steel trap. The way a snare or a trap works
is that when the victim steps on it, it springs up from the ground and latches
hold of the victim by the foot or whatever other part is in the trap. It causes
the victim to be immobilized and stumbling. It’s common knowledge that
a trapped animal, like a raccoon, will, under the distress and anguish of
being trapped, go to drastic measure in order to get away. Some animals will
actually chew off their own paw in order to gain freedom.
I’ve known more than one person who has turned to abusing
himself because of the anguish and distress that have become a part of life.
It isn’t something that is talked about all that much, but it isn’t
anything new. The first time I saw it was about 25 years ago. When I was around
10 years old, I remember seeing scars on the back of a girl’s hand at
the bus stop. They were deep and uniform, like they were intentionally put
there. I asked her where they came from. I remember her eyes were very cold
when she said, “I did that, because I wanted to.” I can’t
imagine the anguish she felt that would push her to abuse her body like that
in order to find some kind of freedom. As I look back on that, I wonder what
was going on under the surface there.
As we gather this morning in the beautiful spring weather, I
wonder what is going on below the surface, and I think the Old Testament writers
had it right. Death and hell seem able to sneak into the mainstream of this
world and snare us, poison us and suck the life right out of us, leaving nothing
but an empty shell. Where is hope for someone who is caught in a snare and
being poisoned by anguish and distress because death and hell have invaded
the land of the living?
Something happens this time of year for Christians who have
known great distress and anguish; thoughts begin to form at the back of our
minds. We talked about it during Lent. Jesus spent a night in a Garden in
great distress and anguish, so much so He sweat great drops of blood. Speaking
of poison, His prayer was, “Let this cup pass from me.” It is
a metaphor for the poison of execution from which He drank deeply. Ironically
while He was trapped on the cross and after He gave up His spirit, they pierced
His side, and blood and water, His life, flowed right out of Him. There was
nothing left but a shell of a body there. No question about it. Death and
hell invaded the land of the living that day.
But that’s not the only invading that happened that day.
The thought at the back of my mind today is from the Apostles’ Creed.
It is taken from Ephesians 4. It says, “Christ descended into death/hell
and rose on the third day.” We celebrated it last week. Death may have
invaded your life, but He invaded death. A long time ago He defeated death
and hell so we can say with Paul the Apostle in the right here and right now,
“Where O death is your victory, where O grave is your sting?”4
We can say with the Psalmist. “You have delivered my soul from death
and my eyes from tears and my feet from stumbling.” “I will love
the Lord because he has heard my voice.” We don’t have to keep
devouring the glass or the cup or the syringe of poison. You don’t have
to lift up the memory that destroys you from the inside out. You can be delivered
from the snare!
That seems all well and good for others, but you don’t
have to walk along the shore to see frogs locked in the snare of death, or
other people in the dorm, or across the aisle at church or around the corner
in your neighborhood. All you have to do is look into the water; into a mirror
at your own reflection. Your eyes are clouding over, and the face you see
is a shell of who you used to be. Inside, you are emptier every day; still
caught in some snare, some addiction, some memory of abuse, some habit of
sin, something that we don’t see but is just below the surface and is
absolutely sucking the life out of you. Death and hell have invaded the land
of the living, and they have a hold of you. You’ve tried absolutely
everything and mostly just made it worse. You’d chew off your right
hand if you thought it would help, but the fact is, you know it won’t.
A long time ago, you decided to bare it in silence. What else is there to
do?
A strange thing happens around our house. It usually happens
at about suppertime. We have a few of those wooden chairs with the slats in
the back of them. The gaps between the slats are wider at the top than at
the bottom. It has happened with both of our girls now. When they have gotten
old enough to start exploring, they’ve stood up on the seat of those
chairs, put their hands in between those slats up high, and then sat down
and tried to pull their hands out of the narrowed slot. They both tried but
not for very long. In fact neither one of them tried long enough to even leave
a mark on their hands. When they found out they were stuck, they just sat
there in silence patiently waiting for us to discover them. (Yeah, right!)
Within a few seconds they yelled out two of the first words they knew, “Stuck,
help! Mommy, Daddy!” I’ll bet it happens the same way in every
house. Mom or dad is there before they can even get the words out, picking
them up and rescuing them from the trap.
You see, when we are caught in a snare we make it so complicated.
Oh, there may be several other steps involved. We may need counseling. We
may need a 12 step program, but what we need to do first and foremost is not
sit in silence paralyzed by some snare while we are trying to figure it all
out. We need to call on the name of the Lord. It’s really a simple prayer,
but the passage says, “God protects the simple.” “O Lord,
save my life!” You know what I think is the best word in this passage?
“His ear is inclined to you.” His hand is cupped listening for
your cry for help. You start right now calling on Him as long as you live,
and I guarantee you one day very soon, you will be able to say, “I love
the Lord because He has heard my voice . . . You have delivered my soul from
the snare of death and my eyes from tears and me feet from stumbling. You
set me free from the trap.”
Those of us, who have simply made that cry and now know that freedom, are going to come in gratitude and love and lift up the cup of salvation. If you suffer distress and anguish today and find yourself in the grip of some snare that has you stumbling around; if something is sucking the life out of you, I’d invite you to come too. And as you do, pray that simple prayer, “O Lord, I pray, save my life!” I promise you will find rescue.
1. Annie Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper Perennial,
1998), 7.
2. For a more complete description, refer to the passage in
Dillard’s book.
3. ibid.