The Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous snake and place it on a pole. Whoever is bitten can look at it and live.”
Numbers 21:8
Our Hebrew ancestors on their journey to freedom, continue to complain. As for all of us, complaining doesn’t help! God tells Moses to a bring staff and make a model of a snake out of it. He lifts it high, and when the people look at it, they become healed.
St. John in his gospel is thinking of this story when he likens the bronze snake lifted hi, to Jesus’ cross on Mt Calvary. See what God does: he takes the result of our wrongs and sins and turns this into source of healing. Even the things we do that are wrong, God doesn’t set out to punish us, but rather to show us how much God continues to love us. God’s love never ends!
The Saturday passages follow the reading list that Jewish people use in their synagogue worship throughout the world. They are taken from
“The Torah,” the first five books of the Bible from Genesis to Deuteronomy that are read each year beginning with autumn.
These Firestarters are from a new edition of The Bible Through the Seasons being developed for families with children. For the Firestarters in the original edition, I recommend the ebook. You will have the entire program of well over a thousand of these introductions with you on your phone or table! Check the menu options at the site for more information.
The Bible Through the Seasons 