GPBC Blog

Would you like to hear a story?

It was a dark and stormy night.

Just kidding.

Well, actually, it was dark but it wasn’t stormy one night, many years ago, when I was curled up on my couch in my SE Portland apartment that I shared with my friend Maile. It was late and I was absorbed in a movie. However, with an offhand glance I noticed both of our cats sitting at the edge of the kitchen linoleum staring, with a little too much interest, at the underside of the refrigerator.

“Oh no,” I thought. “Do we have a mouse or something in the apartment?”

Wary, I crept over to follow their gaze and found myself staring at a red-eyed snake. A million thoughts raced through my mind.

“How in the world did a snake get in our apartment? Who cares? It’s here now. Inside. My. Apartment.”

“Is it poisonous? It can’t be, right? We don’t get poisonous snakes in Oregon. Well, except for rattlers. But it’s not rattling. Probably ok there. I hope.”

“But what if the cats try to play with it and they get bit? I should put them in the bedroom. But what if the snake moves while I’m away and I lose track of it? Oh good grief, Caris, just move the cats to the bedroom and get a grip!”

After herding the cats to the bedroom, much to their dismay, I deliberated about my problem. I certainly didn’t want to touch the snake, which seemed like a key component to its removal from the home. But that meant someone else needed to touch it. Who should I call?

“Boys,” I thought. “When there are snakes and spiders and other unwanted critters, you call boys.” Luckily, I knew some.

I dialed up my friend Johnny who lived in the apartment upstairs. He appeared to have some buddies over too because, as I told him there was a snake in my apartment, I could hear him relaying the information.

“Cool!” I heard them exclaim and soon their pounding steps brought them to my door to view the spectacle. Pleased that my intuition about the opposite sex had been correct, I congratulated myself for thinking to call them.

“Where’s the snake?” Johnny asked.

“It went back under the fridge,” I said. Appropriately, it had sensed trouble.

Johnny edged the hefty appliance away from the wall just enough to see only the middle portion of the snake sticking out in a round arc.

There was some excited chatter behind me as the snake was revealed. Apparently the guys thought having a snake loose in my apartment was awesome.

“Get it out of here Johnny,” I said impatiently.

Johnny looked at me with a bit of a wild look as he realized why I had called him downstairs. The snake was looking a little less awesome now.

“How am I supposed to do that?” he asked pathetically.

“Here,” I said, grabbing an empty, white, plastic trash can, “Take this. You can put it in there.”

He eyed the trash can cautiously. “Yeah, but how am I supposed to get it in there?”

“Just loop your finger around the middle that is sticking out, pull it out and toss it in the trash can,” I replied, demonstratively pantomiming to him as I spoke. I made it sound simple enough, but he eyed me suspiciously with a look that said, “Well if it’s that easy, why don’t YOU do it.”

Nevertheless, he reluctantly accepted the trash can and, to his credit, made his way to the back of the fridge. Positioning his body in such a way so that his arm was the only thing in “harm’s way”, he reached out and swiftly snagged the serpent and flung him, none too gently, into the bin.

“Wahoo!” I cheered, as my cell phone started to ring. It was my roommate. I answered it while staring down at the snake at the bottom of the can. “You’ll never believe what we have in our apartment,” I cried. “A snake!”

“What?!” she said in surprise. “How did that happen?”

“I have no idea but Johnny came down and helped me catch it. We have it in a trash bin.”

“I want to see it, don’t throw it out. I’m almost home.”

Throw it out? Hmm, that was a good point. What were we supposed to do with it now? I didn’t really want to see the thing harmed, but I also didn’t want it in my apartment again.

While we waited for Maile, we Googled what kind of snake we had captured, but, as those things go, wild speculations formed with little in the way of definitive answers.

When Maile burst through the front door, we made room for her in the trash bin huddle. The snake, obviously freaked out at this point, was striking out towards us with its head. “That’s a little disconcerting,” I thought. “It’s time for it to go.”

“Ok guys, can we get it out of here?” I said aloud.

“You want us to just dump it outside?” Johnny questioned.

“Yes, but not nearby. I don’t want it to find its way back into the apartment. Can you take it a block away or something?” I asked.

“I guess,” Johnny shrugged as he and Maile each grabbed a side of the plastic trash bin, like it required two people, and bounded out of the apartment into the cold October night’s air. I watched as their darkened silhouettes flung the poor creature into a neighbor’s bushes a block away.

“I hope it doesn’t find its way into their house,” I thought somewhat guiltily.

When Maile and Johnny returned, and after some heartfelt expressions of gratitude and promises that I would bake him a pie soon for his heroism, we said goodnight to the boys and went to bed.

At work the next day, I couldn’t wait to tell Cara, our office manager, about my recent escapade. I gathered the office ladies around me and recounted the disquieting tale.

At the end of the story one of them asked, “Boy, how in the world do you think a snake got into your apartment?”

“I have no idea!” I answered, savoring the story now that it was in the past.

“Well, do any of your neighbors own a pet snake?” one asked.

I stopped in my tracks.

“Oh. My. Gosh. Kerri! Oh no! Why hadn’t I thought of it before?” Our immediate neighbor, whom we share a kitchen wall with, practically had a reptile zoo in her apartment.

“She’s going to kill me,” I thought. “Those reptiles are her babies. Of course that snake was hers! Why would I even think to call Johnny to help me when the Reptile Queen lives next door to me?! Argh, and now I’ve thrown out her precious snake. Dead. I’m dead.”

Kerri was kind of a tough cookie. She wasn’t someone you wanted to mess with.

And I certainly didn’t want to mess with her alone. I picked up the phone to call for reinforcements.

“Hey Maile, it’s me. You know that snake we threw out last night? It was Kerri’s!”

“I know,” she said.

“What do you mean, you know?!” I asked incredulously.

“Johnny called me. Apparently he went out last night after we went to bed. As he was coming down the stairs he ran into Kerri, who was outside smoking. He was like, ‘Hey, what’s up? How are things?’ To which she replied, ‘Not good, I lost my snake.’ He was like, ‘You lost your snake? That’s weird because Caris found a snake in their apartment tonight.’ Kerri’s face lit up. ‘But we threw it out down the street’ ‘You did what??!!!!,’ Kerri yelled. ‘Where?!’ Kerri demanded. Then apparently she made Johnny go and search the neighbor’s bushes at 11 o’clock at night looking for her snake.”

“Poor Johnny.” I thought to myself. “He’s definitely not getting the better end of this deal.”

“Did they find it?” I asked.

“Amazingly, they did. It hadn’t moved very far because it was so cold out. But I guess it’s alive and back in Kerri’s apartment. Apparently the snake has been missing for a week.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as I hung up the phone but still wasn’t relishing the moment I would run into Kerri next which, of course, happened when I got home that day. Kerri was out smoking.

“So, I hear you threw out my snake,” Kerri said in a convivial sort of tone but with a look that was anything but.

“So, I hear your snake has been missing for a week and you didn’t bother to tell your neighbors,” I countered.

“Touché,” said her smile as she stamped out her cigarette on the rock wall outside our apartments. All seemed forgiven.

“Whew! Dodged that bullet,” I thought.

We chatted amiably a few minutes longer and I entered my apartment knowing I would spend that evening boarding up every hole, nook and cranny that existed between her apartment and mine.

And finding a good pie recipe to bake for Johnny.

The End

I love a good story. Don’t you? It doesn’t matter if the story is being told to me in a movie, on the radio or by the person I’m sitting across from – I love them. A long drive can just fly by with a good audio book.

But you know what? We live within the greatest story ever told! God (a beautiful, holy, supreme being) so deeply loved and dearly prized the people he had created, that he sent his only Son (knowing he would be rejected and have to die a horrible and painful death) in order that a ruined and ungrateful people would have the opportunity to believe and trust in him, finding abundant life here on earth and eternal life beyond the grave. Wowzers.

And this story isn’t just incredible to listen to. It’s amazing to live out.

You see, the Gospel is the story of our rescue, and each of us who have believed in the Rescuer have been written into His story. Now we have our own story to tell within His grand narrative. We are all called to be story tellers, sharing the story of our rescue and all that has been done for us as we continue to walk in The Story.

This Sunday is our next quarterly Community Sunday, and all ages and stages of our faith family will be together to remind each other of the Gospel Story and celebrate our place within it. I am very much looking forward to that. I hope you are too.