Living in the Midst of Snakes

All of us become impatient when things have not gone our way.

The Israelites express similar impatience with their life in the midst of their 40-year journey in the wilderness and complain.

However, God’s patience runs out and he sends an invasion of fiery serpents whose poisonous bites cause many to die.

God sends the “poisonous snakes” to confront us with the truth of the futility of thinking we can simply go our own way.

God instructs Moses to make a bronze likeness of those poisonous snakes and mount it on top of a pole. Then, when anyone is bitten by a snake, all he need to do is look at the bronze serpent on the pole and he will live.

In today’s Gospel Jesus compares Himself to that same bronzed serpent in the desert.

As the bronzed serpent became the means by which God saved snake-bitten Israel, so also does Christ lifted up on the cross become the means by which God saves us.

When we believe that promise, we HAVE the God of never ending patience. We can at last trust the patience of God in the midst of the snakes.