Day #2625

March 9, 2021 

Tuesday’s Thoughts on Scripture for this week comes from Numbers 21:9: So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live. (NRSV)

Out of context this is a strange verse. Well, it is not so much less strange when it is in context, either. The Israelites have been freed by God from Egypt and are wandering in the wilderness. However, as we humans are wont to do, they have begun to complain. There is no food (at least not like in Egypt). There is no water. There is no “home.” We had it good in Egypt, so why have you brought us out here to die, they ask God. 

Uncharacteristically, from what we know as a gracious and loving God, God sends punishment for their complaining - poisonous serpents. People are bit and die and they beg Moses to intercede with God on their behalf. 

But God does not take the serpents away. Instead, God provides a way for the people to live among the serpents - look at the bronze serpent on the pole and live, verse 9 tells us. What is God doing? Why not just eliminate the problem? 

We cry out the same today. Take away this pandemic, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, anger, hatred, racial injustice, hunger, poverty, and the list goes on and on. Are we being punished for complaining, falling away, not believing? That is difficult to swallow. Maybe we should focus instead on the response of God who provides the way for us to live among the things that harm us. In Jesus, the way, the truth and the life, came grace, mercy, and love to save us, to show us God embodied, to adopt us, to one day bring us to himself in death and thereby to God. 

Perhaps the hardest part of faith is trusting that God does the work - that is grace - and is the light in the midst of the darkness of all those things that try to pull us away...however they may come.  

Grant us faith, oh Lord, and show us the way. Amen.

Blessings. And prayers.