About Avoiding Alligators in Your Backyard

Anyone ever heard the story of the old woman who had an alligator in her backyard?

Well, I read it in my devotional annual.

There was an old lady living by herself outside a little village. Her husband was dead, and her children were grown up, and had all moved away. In the end of a little path through the garden, was an old pond in her garden.

The old lady was more than seventy years old and had been living alone in her big house for over thirty years. But she liked living there and did not feel like moving to a residental care home. In the large pond, there lived an old alligator. It might have been even older than the old lady herself.

Every morning she went down to the shore to feed the alligator. It had never done her anything, it had not even as much as snapped after her. The old woman felt safe. From time to time she was visited by large film crews from talk-shows, wanting to publish the strange story of the old lady and her alligator.

One day, out of nowhere, the alligator took both the bread she was feeding it with and her arm! She managed to get herself up to the house, calling 911. Everyone was in shock when the story came out. Why would the alligator hurt the old lady when she'd been feeding him for the last thirty years?

In my devotional annual it explained it like this:

The alligator is a symbol of sin. Sometimes we let sin live in our backyard (or lives) for a long time, just because we don't feel like it's doing any harm to us. Well, try again. It does. Sooner or later it will bite. Why would we want it in our backyards knowing this?

But each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Don't be deceived, my dear brothers.

James 1:14-16

I, myself like breeding aligators in my backyard, from my actions one should believe that my biggest goal in life were to balance on the edge of falling. When I try to eat helthier, I buy all the ingredients I need for baking. If there's situations I try to avoid, I make them come as close as possibly until it's almost impossible to back out of them. You'd think I'd known better. Because when the eggs of my tempting alligators hatch, they give birth to sin, and when my alligators are full-grown they give birth to death.

I should know better than to keep the eggs near the pond, shouldn't I?

How are your alligators?