This is Courtney. Thankfully not our Courtney! She is a salt-water crocodile handler at Hartley’s Crocodile Adventures in Queensland, Australia. Here she is, up to her calves, beating the water with the stick in her right hand to get the croc’s attention, while waving the dead chicken with her left hand. It worked. The big guy came! Courtney was just a little faster than the croc so all he got was the chicken.

A couple days after we were there, at a show not too far away from where we were, a croc-handler wasn’t fast enough, and the big croc got him instead of the chicken. He did not survive.

If pulling a dog’s ears is foolishness (Prov 26:17), what is wading into a croc pond with a dead chicken while beating the water?

It got me thinking. What kinds of senseless things do we do in and around the temptation-infested ponds of our lives? What in the world are we doing there anyway? Aren’t we just asking for an attack? And one that we might not survive?

Run from these things! says the Bible. There are times we are told to stand firm. But from temptation we are told to flee. Do we? I encourage you to memorize these verses about fleeing temptation (2 Tim 2:2; 1 Tim 6:11; 1 Cor 6:18), and put them into practice!

Don’t be croc bait! Run!