Acts 28:1-6 (NIV)
Once safely on shore, we found out that the island was called Malta. The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They built a fire and welcomed us all because it was raining and cold. Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand. When the islanders saw the snake hanging from his hand, they said to each other, “This man must be a murderer; for though he escaped from the sea, Justice has not allowed him to live.” But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects. The people expected him to swell up or suddenly fall dead, but after waiting a long time and seeing nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and said he was a god.
The refugees, sailors, soldiers and prisoners alike, found shelter with the people of the island. They had watched the ship’s attempt at a landfall, had seen it run aground and start to break up, and had seen as people began to leap into the water and swim for shore.
It was cold and rainy, so they quickly built a fire. Paul, anxious to help as usual, gathered some brushwood and laid it carefully on the fire. Very quickly a poisonous snake slithered out of the fire. It had been quiet, almost inert with the cold when Paul had picked it up unnoticed among some sticks, but quickly sensed danger when it was cast along with the wood into the fire and slithered out. In its confusion, it struck at the closest thing it could find: Paul’s hand.
Paul pulled his hand away from the fire with the snake dangling from it by the fangs. He shook it off into the fire, rubbed the bite briefly, and then calmly went on stoking the fire.
The locals, when they saw the snake hanging on Paul’s hand, made a judgment about him. Even though Paul had been saved from a watery death in the shipwreck, they saw the bite of this poisonous snake as Fate not allowing him to escape a well-deserved doom. Therefore, they reasoned that he must have been a worse sinner than any of the other criminals that had come ashore, a murderer probably. They watched for a while in fascination, waiting for the poison to take effect, for Paul to swell up, or to collapse in torturous pain as people always did when they had been bitten by this kind of snake.
But after a short time, it became apparent that Paul was feeling no ill effects at all from the bite – no swelling, no pain, nothing. That was when they determined that he must instead be a god in human form, like the old stories talked about.
Of course, they were wrong on both counts because their theology was informed principally from the myths that they had inherited. Paul had been a sinner, yes, even a murderer, with the blood of hundreds of innocent Christians on his hands. But he had been forgiven through faith in Jesus, and all those stains had been washed away by the blood of the Lamb. In a moment’s time, he had been transformed from a sinner to a saint. And, though he was definitely not a god, he was under the protection of the one true God, who had sent him on the mission he was even then in the midst of, and which God would enable him to complete.
Father, sometimes I think we write things off to Fate almost as much as those Maltese folks did two thousand years ago. When things happen, whether good or bad, we rarely see Your hand at work, and instead write it of too “luck” or “the breaks.” But You are still sovereign, still in control as much as You ever have been. You can still take life or protect it at Your will. Forgive us, Lord, for allowing this pagan mindset to slip in, and help us to always stay in step with Your will, Your guidance, Your commands, so that we can see Your hand at work in every area of our lives. Amen.
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