Looking Up

In 2018, Dr. Rachel Grubb, an emergency physician in rural Kentucky, treated a teenager named Cole who had been bitten by a copperhead while hiking near Red River Gorge. Cole's leg was swelling fast, the venom spreading through his system. Rachel had the antivenom ready within minutes. But Cole, delirious with pain and fear, kept refusing the IV. He thrashed. He argued. He insisted he could tough it out.

"You don't have to understand how it works," Rachel told him firmly. "You just have to let me give it to you."

Cole finally went still, extended his arm, and received what would save his life.

The Israelites in the wilderness had been bitten by something far worse than copperheads — the venom of their own rebellion. They had grown impatient with God, disgusted with His provision, and their grumbling carried a poison all its own. When the serpents came, the people were dying. But the remedy the Almighty prescribed through Moses was almost absurdly simple: look at a bronze snake on a pole and live.