At the beginning of our ball games, we become quiet and look up to the flag as the national anthem is sung. For a moment we give up our divisions and discontent to honor a flag that reminds us of the shed blood of many who died to obtain our freedom.
When we look up, we take our eyes off ourselves and one another and gaze upon something greater than our hurts and arguments.
Today we read about a sacred moment when a hurting, sinful people looked up at a “flag” pole (Numbers 21:4-9).
“From Mount Hor the children of Israel set out on the Red Sea road…But with their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in this desert, where there is no food or water?…In punishment the Lord sent among the people saraph serpents, which bit the people so that many of them died.”
The people had taken their eyes off Moses and began to think only about the hunger pains in their own body. I am sympathetic with this people; I know the feeling of being “worn out by the journey.” And I also know that when this happens my patience grows thin, and I start complaining to myself and those around me. It seems the whole group joined in a “festival of complaining.” Then God gave them something to really complain about—poisonous snakes!
“Then the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned in complaining against the Lord and you. Pray the Lord to take the serpents away from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people…”
One of the blessings of pain is that when it becomes more than we can handle, we turn to God. When our own sin—complaining or any of its companions—is the root source of our pain, we turn to God and honestly admit, “We have sinned against the Lord.” When we pray this way, God always responds. His mercy begins to flow.
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Make a saraph and mount it on a pole, and whoever looks at it after being bitten will live.’ Moses accordingly made a bronze serpent and mounted it on a pole, and whenever anyone who had been bitten by a serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived.”
When the people “looked up” at the serpent mounted on a pole they received a flow of God’s healing mercy. Their relationship with him was restored. Seeing the light of God shining from the pole, they forgot about their pain and realized who they were as a chosen people. God took the very instrument of death—the poisonous snake—and made it his instrument of life and healing.
No matter how dark our situations may be and no matter how bad our attitudes are, there is a cure—looking up at the “flag” of God that waves over the earth. The light that streams from this “flag” causes the darkness, the sin, and even the pain in us to dissipate. We know that this pole was a prototype of the cross of Jesus Christ. God, in his mercy and power, again used the instrument of death—the cross of execution—to be a source of ultimate victory.
The cross hangs high in our Churches. We stop, become quiet, take our eyes off our own petty problems and look up at the body of the One mounted on a pole. We let his merciful, healing love flow into our deepest wounds and set us free from our sins.
“The Lord looked down from his holy height…” (Ps 102:20).
