The Ugly Truth of Garden Snails

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14

My parents and I have been listening to chapel services from various colleges I’m interested in. We figure we can gain a lot of insight on the school based on what they’re talking about in their time dedicated to studying God’s Word, fellowshipping together, and worshipping Him.

So, a couple days ago, while cooking up a dinner of Swedish meatballs and garden snails (true third-culture-kid dinner for ya), I listened to a chapel service from one of our selected colleges. The speaker was talking about hearts and his main point was this: you and I don’t know our hearts.

He gave the example of Peter telling Jesus that he would never deny Him. The speaker said, “I think Peter really didn’t think he would ever deny Jesus…but Peter’s problem was that he didn’t know his heart.” He didn’t know how weak he was. That hit me hard. Because it means that wanting to be true to Christ isn’t enough. We can want something and still lack the means.

This is where grace and truth come in. The truth is that I am weak. The grace is that God is strong. But you know what else is true? My heart is coated in this stubborn, ugly pride. And if I don’t let God chip away at that prideful coating…how will I learn to know my weakness? How will I begin to know my heart?

Lessons from Garden Snails

As I was thinking about all this, I was preparing our lovely side dish of escargot. If you ever thought I was kidding about having lived in France, now you know I was serious. And if you’re a picky eater, you have now also been warned to ask for the menu before accepting an invitation to our house for dinner.

Now, snails are a tedious thing to cook. There are basically three stages…

Stage One: Collecting Them & Feeding Them Good Things

First, you have to know that they exist in your garden. Secondly, you have to go out and search for them, gathering them up to bring inside. Then, you have to detox them for several days. This consists of feeding them healthy leaves and things that will clear out their systems so you know you’re not eating anything that could be dangerous to your own system.

Stage Two: Cleaning Them Up

Because you have to keep them around for a few of days, you have to the dirty work of cleaning up their waste. This means that every day you have to take them each out of the container, wash them up, set them aside, and then wash out the entire container, before putting them all back inside with fresh food and water.

Stage Three: Killing Them & Refining Them

This is all before you cook them! When you’re cooking them you kill them instantly by putting them in boiling saltwater, then you have to put them in cooled water, then you dig them out of their shells and remove the heart, lungs, and internal organs. Finally, after all of this, you cook them in garlic butter and serve them.

Again, tedious process. Especially when you consider how incredibly small snails are compared to most meaty things you could eat.

But as I went through these steps, listening to the chapel service, I was struck by how similar this process is to God’s work in our hearts.

Think about it: God seeks us out, gathers us up, feeds us truth in place of the lies we’ve been eating up, kills our old self, gets rid of the stuff that can’t kill us anymore but isn’t pleasant or good, all with the purpose of creating a pure servant.

What a tedious work.

I don’t think I could cook snails every week…let alone every day. And yet, God does this tedious work in our hearts constantly.

How He loves us.

The ugly truth of garden snails is that, despite their beautifully-marbled shells and seemingly harmless lives, they are full of death.

Literally.

Snails carry a certain parasitic worm that, if eaten by humans, can rest in the brain and destroy your body, eventually causing death.

And do you know how snails become infected with this particular worm? By eating rat feces. They eat the thing that kills. And then they become the thing that kills.

This is how sin works.

When I wrote that snails eat rat feces you probably cringed or, at least, thought about the disgusting nature of it. But what is your reaction when I say we eat up sin?

I don’t react nearly as dramatically to that phrase as I do to the first. And that is the problem. Because, just like snails don’t know themselves well enough to know the effects rat feces will have on their internal systems, humans don’t know our hearts well enough to know the effects sin will have on our lives.

So we keep eating it up. In fact, we don’t even always recognize the difference between sin and the normal, everyday things of life. Because, like rat feces with snails, sin has become a normal, everyday thing of life.

The ugly truth of garden snails is that they eat what kills them…and then become the killer.

But the truth of sin is uglier. We don’t first eat up sin and then become the sinner. Rather, we are the sinner. And out of that sinful nature we are drawn to eat up sin.

James 1:14-15 says “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.”

The ugly truth of garden snails is the ugly truth of the human heart too: both are full of a parasite that kills them and anyone who encounters them.

God, Grace, and Garden Snails

The lovely thing about garden snails is that they can be cleansed from their parasites! But, it requires a tedious work that involves their death.

That’s the unfortunate news.

Like snails, humans can be cleansed from their sin. But it requires a tedious work that involves their death.

This is the difficult, beautiful grace of God. It is not pleasant to our ears, but it is the only way. We must know the weakness of our hearts…the utter need for God’s tedious work in our hearts. And we must die to ourselves so that He can work in us without our stubborn, wiggling, squirming pride getting in the way. Death to self means trusting that God needs to be in charge in the cleansing and refining.

Anytime sin abounds in the human heart, it is not because God is unwilling to do the tedious work. It is because the human is unwilling to let Him.

Are you letting God do His tedious work in your life?

It isn’t pleasant. It requires stepping out of your comfortable, familiar garden and consuming different things. This process is full of dependence for every basic need and trust. But it is worth it! Because just like I knew more about my snails’ cleanliness needs than they knew about themselves, God knows more about our hearts’ needs than we ever could. So, do you trust Him?

It’s going to involve death.

And even after you die, He loves you too much to leave you as you are. Because you will still have unpleasant parts that need tidied up. And you know what? It’s going to take time. It’s going to take some painful carving out of things that you’ve held so dearly they have become a part of you. But it’s going to be okay.

Because He knows best. And “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6).

Glory Full of Grace and Truth

All this tedious work is exhausting. It feels like it will last forever and we get tired of not knowing what is going to happen next or why or when.

But we can rest knowing that we have received grace upon grace.

John, when describing Jesus’ glory, said, “we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. [….] For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (1:14;16).

I am glad I have to be refined to be like God and not the other way around.

Because I don’t know my heart as I should. And in my stubborn, prideful blindness I would probably choose to have God be refined to be like me if given the choice.

The problem is…my glory wouldn’t be full of grace and truth.

Some of you give more grace than you give truth. You want to show kindness, not judgment. Only, in your attempt to tell others of Christ, you fail to explain that they need Him because of the very ugly truth that they are sinful at the core of their being.

Some of you, like me, give more truth than you give grace. You want to preach the gospel, but fail to rightly express the good news. You find it easy to be discerning in confronting your friends’ sins, but lack the ability to show God’s grace in their human fragility.

Praise God, that unlike us, Jesus’ glory is full of grace and truth. He does not lie to us about our need for refining…but He does not leave us in our need either. What good, kind, and holy love!

Searching our Hearts in Light of Grace and Truth

May we search our lives. May we seek and find that our hearts are “deceitful above all things and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9). And may we yearn for His cleansing in our lives…willing to die to self that we may be refined into faithful servants who are pleasing to His eyes.

Parasitic garden snails are not pleasing to a dinner guest. (Arguably, no snail is pleasant to a dinner guest – but even the French wouldn’t want a parasitic garden snail!)

And sinful servants are not pleasing to God.

So we must go through the painful, difficult, tedious work.

He doesn’t put us through this tedious work because He delights to see us suffer. It is, indeed, a consequence of our sin, but it is also an act of love. It is His free gift of sanctification and justification, that we may truly be a “holy and pleasing” sacrifice (Romans 12:1). He knows we can’t clean ourselves – so He does it for us! He just asks that we trust the process.

May we search our hearts…that we might see our fragility. And in seeing our need, may we run to the God who says, “I will do this tedious work. I will make you beautiful.”

May we run to the God of grace and truth. We are weak…but He is strong. And oh how He loves us. May we love Him.

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