No Longer a Scorpion

Remember Billy? A lot of things were different around his home after his Mother and Daddy told Jesus they were sorry that they had done wrong. Jesus had changed them inside where you couldn’t see it, but you could see what happened outside. Instead of yelling, Mother and Daddy would sing. And, every evening, Daddy read a Bible story before they would have prayer.

Sometimes they read Bible verses. Mother had a book that had a list of every word in the Bible! Today Daddy was reading verses with the word “salvation” in them. In his big, deep Daddy voice, he read, “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation.”* (Psalm 13:5) He smiled broadly. “Amen,” he said.

Billy looked at Mother. He could see her saying “Amen,” too, so softly that you could only see her lips move. Billy knew what “Amen” meant. It meant that what you had heard was true. Once, in school, Billy had been asked a question. The answer was yes, but Billy said “Amen.” Everybody laughed, including Mrs. Hawkins, but she knew what he meant.

Daddy and Mother were saying that it was true that they rejoiced in God’s salvation. Then Daddy turned to another page. “Sing unto the LORD, bless his name; shew forth his salvation from day to day.”* (Psalm 96:2) Billy knew what that meant, too. His Mother and Daddy were different since they got saved, because it showed from day to day, though Billy didn’t know what made them different.

Mother looked at the scripture references for the word saved, and told Daddy to read 1 Timothy 2:4. Billy knew that was the first of the two Timothy books, second chapter. He watched Daddy turn to the place: “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.”* (1 Timothy 2:4)

“Daddy,” Billy said, “what does saved mean?”

“I will tell you the story of the scorpion and the frog,” replied Daddy. “Do you remember the scorpion we found in the garage?”

Billy nodded. It was a scary thing with a bunch of legs and two small pinchers in front. Its tail was curved up over its back with a stinger in the end, and it hurt worse than a hornet to be stung. Most things won’t bother you unless you bother them, but a scorpion would chase you and sting you.

“Well,” Daddy continued, “supposedly, a scorpion and a frog were talking once. The scorpion wanted to go across a river, but it couldn’t swim. So he asked the frog to take him across. ‘Oh, no,’ the frog said. ‘You will sting me and kill me.’ ‘No, I won’t,’ the scorpion replied. ‘If I stung you, we would both drown.’ The frog thought about this. It was true—if the scorpion stung him as they went across the river, then the scorpion would drown, too. ‘Ok,’ the frog said, ‘you climb on my back, and I’ll take you across the river.’ But about halfway across, the scorpion did sting the frog. As he sank beneath the water, the frog said, ‘Why? Why did you sting me?’ And, as the scorpion began to drown in the water, he said, ‘I had to. I had to sting you because I am a scorpion.’

“I was like the scorpion,” Daddy said. “I was a sinner inside, so I lived a sinner’s life. I did wrong things because my heart was wrong.” Daddy’s voice got quiet and husky sounding. “Jesus made me different inside. He took the scorpion nature out of me, so that I didn’t want to sting anymore. Now, I am no longer a scorpion, but a saved man. Jesus saved me.”