[ Today's Readings ]
We often take for granted the love God has for us. We are provided with miraculous food but it is not to our liking. He leads us through the desert of exile but it lacks the creature comforts we would prefer. Our various complaints become serpents that bite us and poison us. This isn't what God wants. What he wants is for us to turn to him.
“Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,
and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.”
Our complaints are not valid. They deserve to be struck down and destroyed. But we ourselves risk perishing with them.
But they flattered him with their mouths
and lied to him with their tongues,
Though their hearts were not steadfast toward him,
nor were they faithful to his covenant.
In order for this not to happen we need to look to Jesus. He is one who has every right to complain but opens not his mouth. He has every right to condemn us for our complaints but he does not do so. Instead, he puts all of that to death on the cross. He opens the way to new life. He invites us to come to live with him on that far side of death where we share in his obedience "even death on a cross."
Rather than the condemnation we deserve for our idols, for our complaints, for our dissidence, we find and receive the life Jesus deserves for his perfect obedience. By the power of the cross that obedience and that righteousness is made our own.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Let us exult in the triumph of the cross today.
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