Snake Bites

I got reaquainted with a story from Numbers today. I was reading about the acclaimed Nicodemus who sought out Jesus late one night. In a small room somewhere in Jerusalem, Jesus told Nicodemus that to see the Kingdom of God a person has to be born again. Nicodemus didn't quite get this, and just wanted to know what he needed to do to accomplish seeing the Kingdom. So, Jesus took him back to the story of the Israelites in the desert getting bitten and killed by snakes. "So the Lord sent fiery serpants among the people, and they bit the people; and many died." So the people begged Moses to plead to God for mercy. Basically, tell Him we'll do anything He wants, just get these snakes to go away!!! So Moses prayed for the people and the Lord said to Moses, "Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and it shall be that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live." So, Moses made the snake pole. If a serpant had bitten anyone, when they looked at the pole they lived.
So, the story hit me differently this time. Usually when I think about this event I think that all the people who had been bitten where healed and all the snakes went away. Not so. The pole was erected so that WHEN the people were bitten they would live. God didn't just wipe out all those horrible snakes. He made a way for the people to be healed. Ah, I don't know if Nicodemus got it, but I did. Have you been bitten lately? Have you thought, why doesn't God just eradicate all this horrible stuff of life? Or why doesn't he just give us a nice balm to put on our snake wounds and keep the snakes from biting again? I don't know. I just know that we are going to get bitten time and time again....but when we look to the Cross, we live!