The Snake Has All the Lines!

                    In the late 1950's Jean Kerr wrote a wonderful book titled, The Snake Has all the Lines.  She tells the story of how happy she and her playwright husband were to know their son had won the lead role as Adam in the Garden of Eden play at his parochial school.  When he comes home from school, they eagerly ask their son how the first rehearsal went, and he wasn't happy.  When the parents tell the boy that he has the lead role, the son replies with , "Yeah, but the snake has all the lines."

Today, as I struggled with the proper balance between law and gospel, I felt like the Kerr's son, the snake had all the lines!  Frustrating, to be sure, is how to manage the desire to please God and yet not get ensnared in the trap of works for works sake, which thing the Snake delights!  Just when I think I have things figured out, pride sets in and then all the good works are for naught.

But God...How many times does that appear in the Bible, and how dear those words become to the believer.  But God had a plan for us, and He had this plan from before the foundation of the world. The plan was to send His Son, Jesus to live the perfect life for us that we could not, and then Jesus paid the penalty for our sins by his death on the cross, and then He rose from the dead and conquered sin and death for us.  How awesome is that!

So, when feeling overwhelmed and thinking the Snake has all the lines,  flee to the Word of God and read all that Jesus did to defeat that ol' serpent, and take heart, and rely on the Gospel.  The snake may slither the law before us, but the Gospel tells us how the story will end in victory!