A middle-aged woman was sitting in her den when suddenly a small snake crawled across the floor and under her couch. The dear lady, who was deathly afraid of snakes, promptly ran to the bathroom to get her husband who was taking a shower. The man of the house came running from the shower to the den with only a towel around his waist. He took an old broom handle and began poking under the couch to get the snake.

At that point, the family dog awoke and became excited. In his frenzy over the husband’s actions, the little terrier touched his cold nose to the back of the man’s heel. Instead of realizing what had happened, the man surmised that the snake had out-maneuvered him and bitten him on the heel. He fainted dead away.

The wife sprang into action. She concluded that her husband, because of physical exertion over trying to kill the snake, had had a heart attack. She ran from the house to a hospital emergency room that was a block away.

The ambulance drivers arrived promptly and placed the man, who was now semi-conscious, on a stretcher. As the attendants were carrying the man out of the den, the snake reappeared from beneath the couch. At this point, one of the ambulance people became so excited over seeing the snake that he dropped his end of the stretcher and broke the husband’s leg.

Of course, this all happened on a Sunday morning, about eleven o’clock, when the family should have been in church. Now I realize that church might not have helped, but it surely wouldn’t have hurt. See you in church services Sunday.

"And let us consider..." (Hebrews 10:24,25).