“Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand” (Acts 28:3).

We call some ventures snake-bitten when they don’t work out. Maybe that expression comes from this event in the life of Paul. God wanted him to preach in Rome. There he would give his Christian witness to the emperor as he stood on trial. Later he wrote to the Philippian Christians and told of the impact he had on the palace in Rome. “As a result, it has become clear to all the soldiers who guard the emperor and to everyone else that I am in prison because of Christ” (Philippians 1:13).

On the way to fulfilling his calling, he had been assaulted by a mob in Jerusalem, wrongly imprisoned at Caesarea, endangered by a storm on the trip to Rome and bitten by a poisonous snake on Malta. That final obstacle, a snake bite, didn’t harm him. “Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects” (v. 5).

What a picture of the Christian life! When God has called us and we choose to follow him to our destination false accusations, storms and snakebites can’t stop us. The God who called us can get us to our destinations. There are many things along the way we may not understand, but our security is in God who oversees everything we may face.