Shedding

My oldest son is a senior at Huntington High. He’s taking a class called Herpetology – a class about reptiles. We have a new rule at our house – he is not allowed to bring his homework home.

He tells me stories about his work in the class – it involves hands-on care of snakes, lizards and turtles. Snakes, I have been told, have an eye cap – a scale, sometimes called spectacles – over their eyes. When they shed their skin, these eye caps are shed, too. As shedding approaches, the eyes turn a milky blue, indicating that the cap is releasing and is ready to be shed. During this time, the snake can’t see very well, and it gets nervous and jumpy.

All it takes to make me nervous and jumpy is Grant’s stories about snakes, but anyway….

One of his snakes was just about ready to shed, and Grant had it out on the table to do whatever it was he needed to do that day to take care of it. The snake felt something bump up against its body, and it was jumpy – it couldn’t see what it was bumping into it – so the snake struck at it. When the snake bit down, it realized it was biting its own tail. It dropped its tail, and hung its head; Grant decided the snake was embarrassed by what it had done.

I believe that like the snake, there are parts of me that I need to shed in order to be able to see – in order to be able to react to the person on my doorstep. There are parts of me that I need to shed in order to see through the eyes of Christ.