Destiny and I were walking down to our house on Sabbath, hand in hand, enjoying our last day together for a while since I am now headed to America for my visa run. It had been a wonderful Sabbath, and we were both in a happy mood. As we approached the house, I saw something that made my heart jump, while Destiny reached up to be held… A snake, about four feet long lay on the ground right in front of the ladder to my house.

After the first fright, I noticed that it was not moving, and it’s head was all bloody. A dead snake? Left on the ground right where I needed to walk? My mind raced…we had been together all day, so who could have killed the snake and then just left it there for me to discover? Well, it must have been a student who wanted to scare me! I didn’t think that was funny at all, and I thought that I should go right up and tell them that jokes like that are not appropriate since they could cause heart attacks in unsuspecting women or girls! But first, I still needed to get into the house, so I sent Destiny back to Mango Hall to ask Jason to come and dispose of the snake, while I made as wide a detour as I could and still get up the ladder.

Jason was soon seen running down the hill, since Destiny had done a good job of communicating “snake” but had forgotten the dead part! When he saw the snake, he also noticed the lack of movement and the bloody head…but typical of Jason, he kept his wits about him better than I had and started looking around. He noticed some things that made him think that maybe the cat had killed the snake! Right about then, the cat made his appearance, and left no doubt in our minds that he was indeed the snake killer! He was so nervous and jittery, and was acting as if he expected to be attacked at any moment! Since it was a very deadly snake, I was really worried about him. (When Jason went to move the snake, we found out it was not dead, it just had a bad headache!)

Later, when I had time to reflect, I was so thankful that I had not gone to my students and chewed them out for their “joke”. How easy it is to jump to conclusions. Just because it looks to all appearances that someone is guilty of something, does not mean that they really are. When I stopped to think about it, I knew that my students would never dream of doing something like that to me! (Jason or Travis, yes, but not to me or Sarah!)

I believe that this is the reason that Jesus tells us to esteem others better than ourselves and to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to wrath. If we could all remember this, we could change our world!