Snakes! (Numbers 21:4-9)

 Back when I was a teenager, we made mixtapes. Any of you ever make a mixtape?

On my mixtape there were songs by John Mellencamp, Boston, The Cars, Billy Joel, Huey Lewis and the News, Michael Jackson…

I would make these mixtapes by recording songs from vinyl record albums that I or my friends bought—or, sometimes, we’d record it right off the radio, sitting around, listening, waiting for a song we liked to come on, hoping the DJ wouldn’t ruin it by talking over the start of the song…

And when I was done making my mixtape… I would pop out that little tiny tab in the corner of the cassette, the tab that, once removed, would prevent anyone from accidentally or intentionally recording over the songs I had so carefully selected.

But sometimes, I would want to record over a song, or several songs, that I had put on my mixtape. How do you record over those songs, when that tab is removed?

You put a little piece of Scotch tape over the spot where the tab was. Voila! Now you can record.

And if I would go on a long car ride, like when I was in boy scouts and we were off on some trip, I would take my walkman and my headphones, and listen to my mixtapes to pass the time. 

And when I went to college, I got a nice boombox for my dorm room that could play my mixtapes… although that boombox could also play a brand new thing called a compact disc, though I didn’t have any of those… yet. 

Well, hardly anyone makes mixtapes anymore. Most people don’t even listen to CDs these days. Instead, we have custom-made playlists that can be streamed digitally.

This is just one way that our world has changed. Our world has changed a lot. So much is new and different in this digital age, and these changes have affected everything. 

Including religion.

Right now, we have folks joining us for worship via our livestream. It’s not the same as attending worship in-person, but what a blessing it is for those who are unable to be here, for whatever reason. 

We have meetings that take place over zoom.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The internet has completely changed how we access information. It’s completely changed how I prepare and write sermons. It’s changed how we shop. It’s changed how we communicate.

Really, it has changed everything! - - - -

Phyllis Tickle was an American author and lecturer who spent a lot of time analyzing these changes. She died in 2015, but people still talk about how she described this period of change as a giant rummage sale. 

And she said that the church has one of these giant rummage sales every 500 years.

Every 500 years, she said, the church is compelled to have a giant rummage sale in which it trots out things that have accumulated—things like doctrines, traditions, and practices—and sorts through them to see what should be kept and what should be discarded—just like one would do at a rummage sale.

We are in one of those time periods right now, no doubt about it. Doctrines, traditions, practices—everything is being sorted through, reevaluated, and some of it is being kept, and a lot of it is being discarded… 

Religion is changing. It will never be what it once was.

In case you’re wondering, the last time the church had one of these giant rummage sales, 500 years ago, we were experiencing the Reformation, when Luther wrote his 95 theses and the Protestant branch of Christianity began to take shape. That time of change was fueled to a great degree by the invention of the printing press, just like our own time of great change is fueled by digital communication.

500 years before the Reformation, it was the Great Schism that shook up religion, when Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity split over issues like the source of the Holy Spirit, whether leavened or unleavened bread should be used during communion, and the jurisdiction of the pope.

500 years before that, the church was dealing with the aftermath of the conversion of Constantine, when Christianity went from being an oppressed religion of the poor, to the established religion of the empire.

And 500 years before that, we had Jesus.

Every 500 years, a time of radical transformation. And we are living in one of those once-every-500-year periods right now. And the changes we are experiencing are even more profound than just the evolution of music media, from mixtapes to CDs to streaming. 

It’s an exciting time to be alive!

So, yeah: if it seems that the world is changing so fast, it’s not just you. It really is a time of radical change, the likes of which the world hasn’t seen in at least 500 years.

But the change doesn’t happen in an instant. We don’t just snap our fingers, and all of a sudden, we’re living in a new age.

This time of transformation is spanning several generations. It takes several generations to get used to the changes… and the changes are still happening.

But so many wonderful things have come from it all. The ability to livestream worship, for example; or, the ability to carry around an entire music library or an entire book library in a device that fits in the palm of our hands. Even Gene Roddenberry couldn’t have imagined all the things we can do with a cellphone.

But sometimes, it can be overwhelming. Sometimes, it feels that things are changing too fast, that there’s too much change. Sometimes, we just want to retreat, to go back to a time when life was simpler, and easier to understand. We long for the days of mixtapes, or even 8-tracks; we long for the days of manual typewriters and rotary phones and roll-down windows, and…

…and if any young people are listening, you probably have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?

If you’ve ever felt that way, if you’ve ever longed for the old days, despite all the advantages of modern technology, then maybe it won’t be too hard to understand the frustrations of the Israelites, as they journeyed toward the Promised Land.

Life in Egypt was far from perfect. After all, the Hebrews were slaves to Pharaoh; they had few rights; they were forced to labor long hours.

Freedom was their dream, their hope; and when Moses led them out of Egypt, they were overjoyed…

But the journey to a new land and a new nation was a huge change. Their transformation as a people was a lot more challenging than they anticipated. They wanted the time of transition to be over quickly. They wanted someone to snap their fingers, and bam: new life, living easy!

But that isn’t how transformation works.

For the Israelites, it took 40 years. An entire generation, and then some. They grew impatient. They began to grumble, and complain.

And the changes that did come, the changes they were already experiencing… well, it wasn’t what they had expected, and it was all so new… they had never done things this way before!

So: maybe it began with just a few people, standing around a campfire one night. One of them says: “You know, back in Egypt—hear me out! I know we were in slavery, but in Egypt, at least we knew where we would be laying down to sleep each night. And at least we knew we would be getting food to eat. And at least we knew what the future would hold, because every day was the same…

“No worrying about where we were going, or what we would eat… No being overwhelmed by how different and new everything is…

“Was it really so bad?”

And someone else around the campfire would chime in: “In Egypt, Pharaoh made us work hard. But this journey through the wilderness is hard, too.”

And the thing is, they were absolutely right. Any kind of transformation is hard work. 

And freedom is hard work. Liberation is hard work. It’s hard physically, and it’s hard mentally.

Just like many of the changes we are experiencing today are mentally exhausting.

I don’t know about you, but when I ask one of my kids to help me with some tech issue, it’s usually not because I’m not capable of learning or figuring it out; it’s just that I’m tired, mentally, from all the learning and all the figuring out that all these changes have forced upon me.

And… it makes me lazy. I don’t want to learn it.

And sometimes, people get mentally tired trying to keep up with all the other changes taking place in our world… demographic changes, for example. Neighbors speaking different languages. Neighbors redefining love, redefining gender, redefining what constitutes a family. Neighbors who insist on eating things like curry, or boba, or avocado toast. 

I never heard of curry or boba or avocado toast when I was a kid.

All these changes are a lot to adapt to. No wonder so many people long for the “good ol’ days.” And yes, I know people for whom the good ol’ days include a lot of curry, but that’s not my experience….My point is that when the world changes, it’s hard to adapt to, and we’re tempted to grumble and complain about it all… 

Well, God got upset with the Israelites. God got upset with their grumbling and their complaining. God was trying to lead them to freedom and liberation and a new beginning and new life, but their minds were stuck in the past. 

But what could God do? God wasn’t about to say, “Don't make me turn this journey to the promised land around!” 

So, God sent snakes. Poisonous serpents. Which bit many of the Israelites; and those that were bitten started dying.

Now, I heard our General Minister, Terri Hord Owens, say the other day that the snakes are, in her mind, a “narrative device,” because God doesn’t intentionally inflict evil on people. And that may very well be so. But let’s stay immersed in the story, and treat the snakes as real, something that was causing great pain among the people…

So the people went to Moses and said, “We’re sorry! We sinned by complaining and grumbling! Please, pray to the Lord, to take the snakes away and heal us!”

So Moses prayed, and the Lord told Moses to make a serpent of bronze, and put it on a pole, so that anyone who was bit by a poisonous serpent could look at the serpent made of bronze, and be healed. 

Now, you may be asking: Why snakes?

In several different ancient religions, snakes were considered divine beings. Snakes also symbolized new life, or eternal life, because of the way they shed their skins. 

When a snake sheds its skin, it casts off the old, and becomes new once again… and isn’t that what God was calling the people of Israel to do? Wasn’t God calling them to cast off their old way of living, and the old mindset that went with it, and embrace a new way of living and a new mindset? Wasn’t God calling them to cast off their slavery mindset, and embrace a liberation mindset?

People often wonder why it took 40 years for the Israelites to get out of Egypt. Well, I once heard it said, it didn’t take 40 years to get the Israelites out of Egypt; it took 40 years to get Egypt out of the Israelites. It took 40 years to get that Egypt-mindset out of them, and for them to fully accept and embrace the new life God was leading them to.

This season of Lent is a time of transformation. Lent is 40 days, a reminder of the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness, but also a reminder of the 40 years that it took the Israelites to transition from life in Egypt as slaves, to life in the Promised Land as a new, free, nation.

And during the season of Lent, we are challenged to examine our own lives, and discern what it is that we need to leave behind. What needs “casting off” from our lives, just like the old skin that is cast off by a snake? And what new way of living is God calling us to embrace?

Jesus, who compared his death on the cross to the snake Moses lifted up on the pole, is always calling us to leave behind this world, this kingdom, and all that this world says is important, to embrace a new future of life and wholeness and freedom.

But to do that, we have to die to our old selves and our old ways, to let go of so many of our ideals. The values of this world are not the values of God’s kingdom. This world: profit margins and a scarcity mindset. God’s world: generous giving, and an abundance mindset.

This world is about divisions and barriers and us vs. them. God’s world is about unity and acceptance and coming together as one body.

God is calling us to leave behind the ways of this world, and embrace the ways of God’s kingdom. 

God is calling us to leave the past behind. We can remember the past; If the past was good, we can give thanks for the past; if the past was harmful, we can heal from our past.

But God’s not calling us to live in the past. 

God is calling us to live into a present and future glory. God is beckoning us to live in God’s kingdom. The kingdom of transformation. The kingdom of freedom and liberation. The kingdom where the old is made new. The kingdom of eternal life. ⚫

Btw, curry is really good. A member of my last church made the most amazing curry, from a recipe she brought over from Pakistan when she immigrated to the U.S. Meanwhile, my son Tristan in California loves avocado toast. But boba: I still think boba is kinda weird, but let’s keep that between us; I don’t want God to send a snake to try to convince me otherwise.

Altar of Lament (Numbers 21:4-9)

 Sermon: Altar of Lament

Peace be with you. My name is Danny Bradfield. My pronouns are he/him/his, and I’m the pastor of Bixby Knolls Christian Church.

Today is March 14, 2021. It is the fourth Sunday of Lent. And it also marks one year since the pandemic interrupted our lives in so many ways. 

One year ago was the last time we were able to gather together here in our sanctuary for worship. And even on that day, many of us chose to stay safely at home. 

Thinking back to that day brings up all sorts of emotions. What I remember most is that, as I said the words of the benediction at the end of the service, I began to cry. 

You probably didn’t see it - I mostly kept it inside. But I knew that those were the last words I’d be speaking to you face-to-face, in worship; the last time we’d be together, all in one place, for a long time...

I just didn’t realize how long.

We were told maybe six weeks. President Trump said we’d be back in church by Easter... 

Well, we knew better than that. We knew that it would be months, not weeks; but I don’t think we could have imagined that it would last over a year.

Maybe it’s good that we didn’t know, then, how long it would last, or how drastically our lives would change, or how many lives would be lost, or how much we would miss out on…

But now, a year later, we do know. We do know the effect this pandemic has had on us, and continues to have on us. We do know how much life has changed. We do know just how much we have had to give up.

There are some parallels between our situation, and the situation of the Hebrew people on their journey through the wilderness; their journey toward the Promised Land.

When they began their journey, I’m sure they knew it would be challenging. For generations, they had lived in Egypt, but they had packed up with a moment’s notice - they didn’t even have time to bake bread for the journey. They packed up and headed out, escaping Egypt, being chased by Pharaoh’s army, crossing the Red Sea…

They knew it was going to be challenging; but I don’t think they imagined just how challenging their journey would be. I don’t think they imagined how incredibly long it would take.

When later generations told the story of the Exodus, they would explain that God had a reason for making it take so long. God led them through the wilderness for forty years, because it would take that long for them to mentally be ready to form a new nation, a new kingdom. There was a purpose to it. It was all part of God’s plan, for their own good.

The way I understand the world - and the way I understand God - I can’t quite say that God had a reason for sending us into a pandemic, and for making it last as long as it has. I don’t believe God works that way. God doesn’t cause misfortune or calamity to come upon us. 

But I do believe that God can work through whatever situation we face - God can use whatever we’re going through - to teach us, to help us learn and grow and become better people.

I fully understand why the Hebrew people grumbled with impatience along the way. What they wanted, what they hoped for, what they prayed for, what they envisioned… wasn’t coming. At least, not when they wanted it to. 

They just kept wandering. Year after year.

It was taking too long.

And they had given up so much.

We don’t think about it much, but people died during the exodus. In fact, the journey was so hard and took so long, that the generation that left Egypt was not the generation that finally entered the Promised Land. That was a whole new generation.

The hopes and dreams of those people who spread the blood of the lamb on their doorposts; who ate their lamb chops and unleavened bread and bitter herbs; who listened in silent terror as the Lord passed through Egypt, killing every firstborn of the Egyptians; and who led their families out of Egypt… their hopes and dreams would not be realized in their lifetimes, but in the lifetimes of their children.

I don’t think they knew this at the time. And I don’t think they knew how difficult the journey would be. Because, along the way, there was much grumbling on account of their impatience… as we heard today.

Their grumbling and their impatience didn’t help things. In fact, it made things worse. It led to all sorts of additional problems for them. Problems involving snakes. 

So I don’t think grumbling and impatience is going to help us, either. Not if we want to avoid the snakes.

The Bible does give us a better way to respond. The Bible does show us how to respond when things don’t go our way; how to respond when the things we’re waiting for don’t seem to be coming, or seem to be taking too long. The Bible shows us how to respond when people are dying and we’re missing so much the life we once took for granted. 

The way to respond is not with grumbling and impatience.

The way to respond is also not with fake smiles and pretend cheer.

The way to respond is with lament.

Half the psalms in the Bible are psalms of lament; in addition, there’s a whole book of the Bible titled Lamentations. 

Lamentations is a book of poetry, and the introductory notes in my Oxford Annotated Bible point out that every chapter in the book of Lamentations is written in a limping 3:2 meter that is recognizable even in translation, and that every chapter takes the form of an acrostic: the poet wrote down the left side of the page every letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and then wrote a verse of poetry for each letter. (Well, actually, they wrote the letters down the right side, since Hebrew is read right-to-left, but you get the point.)

How much sorrow, how much sadness, must that poet have been feeling, to write so many lines, lamenting what had been lost?

The opening lines of Lamentations read: “How deserted lies the city, once so full of people!

How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations!

She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.”

The poet knew that there is power in naming what has been lost. There is power - there is healing power - in naming what we’ve lost.

Richard Rohr - author & Franciscan priest - has said that “If we don't transform our pain we will most assuredly transmit it.” 

If you watched WandaVision, you know that Wanda Maximoff wasn’t able to transform her pain, and she ended up transmitting that pain to others. She wasn’t able to deal with all the grief and sorrow within her. She wasn’t able to lament, and therefore she wasn’t able to heal.

Likewise, the Hebrews didn’t lament, they didn’t acknowledge their pain, and thus they weren’t able to transform their pain into something healing. Instead, their pain turned into grumbling and impatience, and led to even more pain, which in their case came in the form of deadly snakes.

Lamentation leads us to the source of our pain, which can be hard. Both Wanda Maximoff and the Hebrews chose to avoid their pain. And, as a result, things went from bad to worse. Too often, we do the same.

When someone we love dies, a brief period of mourning is acceptable; but after a few days, we’re told - or we tell ourselves - it’s time to move on.

So from then on, we keep our grief to ourselves. Grief never really goes away, so we suppress it. We avoid the pain. But when we suppress grief and avoid the pain, it can turn into something else. Something worse. Grumbling. Complaining. And worse...

Over the past year, I’ve been trying to provide space for us to lament. Some weeks I do it better than others; but I know we need space to lament. We need space to grieve. We need permission to weep and cry.

Because, friends: we’ve been through a lot. And you need to know: it’s OK to grieve. It’s OK to weep and cry.

I’ve invited you to have a rock with you today. These rocks that we have are going to be our rocks of lament. 

Think of one thing you’ve had to give up during this pandemic. One thing you’ve lost. One thing you’ve missed. 

It could be going out with friends. It could be seeing smiles and receiving hugs. It could be holding your grandchild or great-grandchild. It could be singing songs in worship. It could be a loved one who died, who you didn’t get to say goodbye to. It could be something that is unique to you and your life, your situation. 

As long as it’s something that you’re sad about in this season of pandemic, let your rock represent that sadness

Holy God, these rocks are a reminder to us of all we have lost, all we mourn, all we grieve - especially during the past year, this year of the pandemic. Let these rocks be a reminder to us, to acknowledge our sadness, to ourselves, and to you; and to lift up to you all our sorrows. For we know that you hold every aching thought of ours, and you long to wipe every tear we shed.

Thank you, God, for your love, your compassion, and your faithfulness. Amen.

I want you to keep your rock. It’s OK if you find a better rock, but keep a rock and have it with you next time we worship. 

And when we are able to once again gather together in our sanctuary for worship, I invite you to bring your rock with you. We’re hoping to start in-person worship again in April, but I know not all of you may feel comfortable or ready yet - that’s OK. You can continue to join us online until you feel ready.

Just keep your rock with you until the day you do make your way back here to our sanctuary. We’re going to place our rocks in a pile as a sort of altar - what the Bible calls an ebenezer - a way of remembering something significant.

It will be our altar of lament.

It will remind us of what we’ve been through. 

It will remind us of the grief we share. 

It will remind us to grieve, and to receive the healing that comes through grief.

Looking Up, Looking Forward (Numbers 21:4-9)

Many of you know that I often ride my bike to the church on weekdays. Lately, however, I’ve got into a new habit.

When I ride my bike, I like to wear shorts—not the cycling shorts that my brother-in-law wears on his marathon bike rides, but shorts nonetheless. But I discovered that on winter mornings, when I’m riding, and the air is blowing across my legs and across my face—it’s cold!

So lately, I’ve been walking. It only takes me about fifteen minutes to walk here, and walking, I can wear my long pants; I can wear my wool hat, if it’s exceptionally cold, instead of my bike helmet that does nothing to keep my head warm.

And on my way, I pass houses with beautiful gardens. My favorites are the native plant gardens—they smell so wonderful! Maybe it’s because I’m most definitely a native southern Californian, but I’ll take a garden with poppies and sagebrush and giant succulents over nicely pruned rosebushes any day.

I’ve discovered, also, that my fifteen-minute walk provides an excellent opportunity to pray. Riding a bike, and certainly, driving a car, require too much of my attention to really pray well. But even a brisk morning walk is well-suited to prayer. Although I admit that it does have its drawbacks. Last week as I walked, deep in prayer, someone said “good morning” to me as I passed, but since I was praying I hardly noticed her, and I was so startled by her greeting that, well, I nearly tripped over my own feet.

It probably goes without saying that the prayers I pray when I’m alone are, in many ways, different from those I pray from the pulpit. They are often clumsier, that’s for sure; less poetic, less refined, less composed, if you will.

I point this out to you, just because I want to be sure that you know that your own personal prayers don’t need to sound like the prayers you hear in church. In fact, they shouldn’t. They should be your own.

Corporate prayer and personal prayer: they’re two different things…. and both are essential to a life of faith.

In recent weeks, I’ve found a lot to pray about. I guess there always is a lot for us to pray about, but it isn’t until we take the time to pray that we realize this. My prayers usually start with some wordless feelings of gratitude for the beautiful plants and flowers I see and smell as I walk. Then my thoughts turn to people. I pray for my family. I pray for my church. I remember some of the prayer concerns that were expressed in worship. I think of people I know, friends and family members, and lift them up in prayer. Often this takes place without words, but in thought.

It seems that many people are having a tough time these days. I think of—and pray for—elderly people in our church and in our community, those who are frightened by the awareness of their own physical—and, in some cases, mental—decline. I think of people who are struggling in these tough economic times, especially those who have lost their jobs or their homes. I think of the many people I know dealing with developmental or psychological or chronic health issues. I think of some of the young people I know, including the one teenager I talked about last week, who still struggle to find their way in the world. I think of families I know, quite a few actually, which are in the midst of divorce.

If I were to come up with an analogy, a metaphor, for the difficult situations people are facing, for the pain and the hurt they are experiencing, I think I just might describe it as being bitten by a snake. Certainly, from the story of the Garden of Eden, the snake is a symbol of evil, of suffering. And on some days, I can’t help but feel that more and more of us are being bitten.

Literally, of course, snakes are not any more evil than any of the rest of God’s creatures. I myself have encountered rattlesnakes in the wild on four different occasions, and although encountering them did give me a good scare, they seemed perfectly content to slither away into the chaparral, rather than attack and bite.

I wonder about the snakes that attacked the Israelites as they neared the end of their forty years’ journey through the wilderness. Did it really happen, as scripture describes? Were there really thousands of snakes, slithering out of their holes at night, into the beds of the sleeping Israelites, sliding under their blankets in the darkness, across their bodies as they slept unaware?

Kind of creepy, huh?

And were they really sent by God? If so, I must confess that that’s a god that I have a hard time believing in, let alone worshiping.

And then there is the bronze snake that was fashioned, twisted around a cross and held up for all the people to look upon. A symbol of healing that continues to this day; we see it on the sides of ambulances and in the logos for various medical associations: a snake wrapped around a pole.

In some of the other religions that were prevalent in the time of Moses, snakes were considered divine beings. Asclepius, the Greek god of healing, carried a staff on which a snake was entwined. How strange is it that the God of the Israelites would use the symbol of a Greek god to bring them healing! Doesn’t that seem a little bizarre? Many generations later, King Hezekiah would also find it strange. That bronze serpent, which had been carefully preserved since the time of Moses—Hezekiah saw it as an idol, and had it destroyed.

Certainly, one could dwell on these details, these inconsistencies and incongruities, forever, and be no closer to understanding the significance or the meaning of this story. Snakes are fascinating, there’s no doubt about it; and the discussion of their literal and symbolic role in scripture has no end. But, to move us along, let’s look at the bigger picture here, and see what was really going on.

The Israelites were being attacked by snakes. Why? Because they had become impatient and angry. I understand their impatience; they had been wandering through the wilderness for almost forty years. That’s a really long time. Life expectancies generally weren’t that long; most of the Israelites weren’t even forty years old. They’d been wandering their whole lives.

They knew that their parents weren’t wanderers. Their parents had homes, permanent homes, in Egypt. They weren’t very luxurious; in fact, they were the homes of slaves. But they were homes nonetheless.

A new land, a new home, awaited them; but would they ever get there? It seemed less and less likely. They had recently received reports about some giants that they would have to face before entering the promised land: another seemingly insurmountable obstacle on this seemingly never-ending journey. No wonder they had become angry and impatient.

I think the type of snake that bit them had a name. It was the snake of despair. It was the snake of giving up. It was the snake of lost hope and faith. It was the snake of “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

And that is the snake that is creeping into so many people’s lives today, in these troubled times.

Scripture never promises that we won’t have rough times. Scripture never says that life will be easy. There are, indeed, times in life when you will be bitten. There are times when you will walk through the dark valley.

In such times, it is tempting to look down, to look at the snake, to dwell on one’s fear and anxiety and despair. It is tempting to look to the past, to look to the way things were, to look back to Egypt and even long for it. It is tempting to give up the journey, to stop moving forward, and retreat.

But then someone comes along, with a bronze snake on a pole, and says that healing and comfort will come to you; but you have to look up. Don’t look down; look up, and be healed. Look forward, because God is with you. The valley is dark, and there are snakes all around; but God is with you. And God will journey with you into the promised land.

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One day, Jesus got into a conversation with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. It was a troubled time in which Jesus lived, a time when all aspects of life were controlled by the Roman Empire. The Jewish people, which had once been a proud nation, no longer had a life of their own. Repeatedly, they were told: You are Caesar’s. Your life belongs to Caesar. Caesar defines who you are; every aspect of your life is lived in relation to Caesar.

Needless to say, faithful Jews longed for a different definition of life. They longed for a new life—life lived in the kingdom of God, rather than the kingdom of Caesar.

Pharisees like Nicodemus believed that this new life would come only when Rome was overthrown. However, Rome was so big—Caesar was so powerful—that only God was capable of such a feat. Therefore it was of utmost importance that all people adhere to even the smallest details of the religious laws and traditions. Maybe then, the Pharisees believed, God would act.

Nicodemus went to Jesus at night, after dark, to see what Jesus had to say about this. Jesus said to him, “You must be born anew to see the kingdom of God. New life comes from God.” And then, strangely enough, Jesus brought up the incident with the snakes.

“Just as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness,” he said, “so must I, the Son of Man, be lifted up on a pole. When the Israelites stopped looking down, trying to drive off the snakes by themselves, and looked up, they were healed. When you stop trying so hard to justify yourself by covering up all your failures, and instead look to the cross, then you will receive new life—the eternal life that comes from heaven. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who looks upon him and believes in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.”

It is so hard to live a perfect life. In fact, it is impossible, even in the best of times. These are not the best of times, and yet we still wonder why our life is not perfect, why we don’t have the job, or the income, or the mental clarity, or the perfect happy little family that we desire. We still feel the fangs of the snake; we still feel the venom of despair spreading through our bodies.

We’re impatient for something to happen. We’re angry that so much uncertainty remains, that so many things are still unresolved. Surely, there’s got to be a better life than this.

There is. You won’t find it by looking down. You won’t find it by looking back. Instead, look up. Look at the cross, which shows how much God loves you. Look ahead to the new life that awaits you. And by that I don’t just mean the life that happens after you die; I mean the life that begins as soon as you recognize yourself as a child of God.

You’re not a child of Caesar. You’re not a child of the economy. You’re not a child of your culture. You’re not a child of your failed relationships. You’re not a child of your mistakes. You are a child of God.

The journey may be long, but you are a child of God. The road may be hard, but you are a child of God. There may be shadows all around, but you are a child of the giver of light. There may be snakes all around, but you are a child of the ultimate Healer. There may be lonely days and lonely nights, but you are a child of the one who walks with you, even through the deepest, darkest valley.

You are a child of God. Look at the cross, and know that it is true. You are a child of God.