Playing Possum

Playing Possum

“Why do you look for the living among the dead? 
He is not here; he has risen!” 
Luke 24:5-6 (NIV)

One wintry day, my dog Panda and I took my friend Zola for a walk in the snow-dusted woods.  As is her custom, Panda dashed on ahead of us frolicking with abandon in the snow.  As my friend and I caught up with Panda, I noticed that she had something in her mouth.  “Panda, put that down!” I shouted, and surprisingly, she did, but continued to stand guard over her treasure.  Curled up at her feet was a dead possum.  Naively, I stooped over and picked up the lifeless critter.  Like Panda, my curiosity gets the best of me sometimes.

After a quick look, I placed the limp body back on the ground and continued to look at it.

“He’s not dead.” Zola declared, amused at my ignorance.  “He’s playing possum!” 

Of course he was playing possum.  These resourceful creatures are famous for their passive survival skill.  This pointy-nosed varmint, with its snake-like tail certainly fooled me, but it did seem like his mouth twitched just a tad.  Later, as we retraced our steps, we stopped to look for him, but he was gone.  Yep, he was playing possum, all right.

That evening, when I told my husband about our encounter in the woods, he reminded me, “You don’t pick up possums!  Possums are nasty!  Possums carry rabies!”  Usually I’m the one cautioning him for what I consider to be reckless brushes with wildlife.  But this time, I was on the receiving end, and appropriately so.

There's a parallel with what Jesus' beloved friends experienced when they went to his tomb on the first Easter Sunday.  Just like my possum, Jesus was gone.  However, unlike the wily possum, Jesus wasn’t playing possum.  How could this be? They had witnessed his death with their own eyes and seen to it that his body had been laid to rest in a tomb.  Imagine their confusion and panic as they struggled to make sense of what made no sense to the human mind.

You may be standing on the far side of the creek, a puzzled look on your face, wondering how on earth I’ve leapt into an analogy between our Risen Savior and—of all things—an ugly, rat-like creature.  Many skeptics of Jesus’ day, and throughout the centuries, have doubted Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  “Oh, that’s just a story,” they say.  Or, perhaps, while believing that Jesus was a real historical person, they might, however, argue, “but his resurrection is just a myth.”  Might some among those skeptics also have said, “He was just ‘playing possum’”?  There must have been dozens of outlandish theories and rumors about what really happened. 

Every time I see a possum, I am reminded of Jesus’ resurrection and the gifts of salvation and life everlasting.  God captures my attention through my encounters with nature. 

Be on the alert for when and how God is reaching out to you

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