Since we moved to Panama, Sue and I have been cliff dwellers. We loved to perch on our balcony and watch the coming and goings of people, clouds, tides and storms. Besides the interesting and beautiful vistas, twenty stories up has some other advantages. In all our time there, I had never seen a scorpion. In all my life … I had never seen a scorpion.
Now that we have descended to earth, we have dispatched two in the space of less than a week. I screamed when the first one scuttled past my foot. I didn’t want to go near it, but I also didn’t want it hiding in the bedroom. I grabbed the nearest thing I could and wacked it like Thor swinging his hammer. I backed away trying to see where it had gone and nearly stepped on its twitching carcass. It had somehow followed my backswing and landed behind me. I don’t even want to think about the “Dancing with the Stars” gyrations that would have ensued had it landed in my hair. When the deed was done, I realized that my heart was racing faster than when I’d recently gone paragliding. How could a creature, maybe three inches long, induce such alarm?
Misinformation played a part. Prior to that encounter, old westerns were my only source of information on these arachnids. In films, the equation is simple; One sting = One dead cowboy. The scorpion trots happily through the desert sand and into Chester’s boot. Chester wakes and grabs the weathered piece of footwear. “Don’t do it Chester!” Too late … he’s already doing a death scene of William Shatner proportions (and quality).
Some scorpions are poisonous, and what you don’t know could kill you. But not all scorpions are deadly and what you don’t know could keep you bound in fear. John 12:42 tells us that many of the religious leaders believed in Jesus …“But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue.” They feared the wrong thing in the wrong proportion. Otherwise they would not have preserved their status and tradition at the cost of a relationship with their Messiah and Savior. See Luke 12 (especially verses 4 & 5).
