Look and Live

Good Monday, my friends. As we step into this week, what are you hoping for? Is your view of the world coming into focus through the lens of God’s kingdom?

In one of our ancient faith stories (we read this bit of it yesterday in our worship service), God’s people have a snake problem. God has literally freed these folks from slavery and oppression. God gave them food to eat, a community (although mobile, a community none the less) in which to live, and asked them to follow, that God would lead them. And they still complained.

Perhaps their idea of freedom was to live in the palaces of the very people who had oppressed them. Perhaps their idea of freedom involved holding power over others as it had been held over them, using other people for their own gain. Whatever it was, the life God had given them wasn’t enough for them and so they convinced themselves that “going back to normal” was preferable to following God.

By their own poor vision, they put themselves in danger. And so they cried out and asked God to take away the danger and what I find so interesting is that God didn’t remove the danger. God didn’t take the snakes away but God did give them the cure: to face their own egos that convinced them that “God isn’t enough.”

You see, the dangers in this life are the results and consequences of our own doing. Like the ancient Israelites, we look for our life’s purpose as anything other than following God. We see following God as a means to an end, rather than life itself. And then we cry out to God when things go wrong. We complain to God when things aren’t going as we think they should. And God hears us and says, “follow me, my beloved.”

That’s the good news! God remains faithful to us even when we aren’t faithful to God. Jesus says when we follow God we are living and that when we choose our own way that is death. When we are willing to look at those bits of our ego that cause us to think God isn’t enough, God heals us and restores us to the everlasting life we are created for.

I pray this isn’t too much for a Monday morning and that your day is filled with the awareness of the presence of God with you always. I pray for all of us as we continue to have our vision fine tuned by God’s Love. Let me know how you are doing and how specifically I can pray for you.