Last year, for our spring Gospel Meeting, Jewell, Ana and I rode our bicycles around our neighborhood, advertising our VBS and inviting our neighbors. We came across a turtle in the middle of the road, meandering across to one of two ponds in our neighborhood.
I decided to be a good environmentalist and help the turtle off the road toward his destination and save him from certain death. But when I touched the back of his shell, his long neck slithered out of his shell and he ferociously snapped at me. He came out of his shell with such force that it spun his shell and whole body about 900.
Startled, I jumped back. I did not want to get bitten and have to sit down and wait for it to thunder before he turned loose! Especially in this weather. But, I wouldn’t give up too easily. I tried again from behind him. He again snapped at me and spun his body around. I tried it about four more times – jumping back every time he snapped at me – before I realized that he couldn’t reach my hand anyway.
I finally picked him up and moved him into the grass, to the great delight of two of our neighbors who were sitting in their cars watching me dance around a turtle in the middle of the road!
How many of us, when we are corrected by someone we love and/or respect, snap at them? They are trying to help us be better people, better husbands or wives, better parents, better Christians – help us across the road – and we turn and “bite” at them? To what effect?
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Many people will quit trying to give constructive advice. As with the turtle, if you bite me, I’m likely to quit and walk away. If I do, you’ll probably get run over.
Solomon said, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6). The next time you are tempted to snap at someone who has given you some constructive criticism, remember my encounter with the snapping turtle and let the person help you across the road!
–Paul Holland
