Dying to Live: Moses, Bagworms, and Chemo

Bagworms are nasty. And deadly.

I was doing yard work with the kids this past weekend--mostly pulling weeds and trimming bushes. Then I looked up. Right at eye level was this nasty cobweb looking thing that completely surrounded an entire branch of our tree. The mealworm looking organisms inside the cobweb enclosure--and there were hundreds of them--were devouring the leaves. There was nearly nothing left. And, 3 more of these sickening sacs surrounded other spots on the same tree.

This is what bagworms do--they devour and spread until the entire tree is dead.

Pruning: Trees and Serpents

In order to save the tree, I cut off the branch that was infested. I severed the infected growth and removed the parasitic organisms. In doing so, I had the joy of getting an even closer look inside the cobweb pouch of repugnant invertebrates. I was only able to hold it together because my kids were right there with me and I needed to save face in front of them. After removing this and a couple more of the bags from branches I looked up at the tree. This led to a quick text to my neighbor--the tree is in a flowerbed that we both share. I wanted to give my neighbor a heads up for the tree looks a little funny now. The middle of it looks bare and empty, kind of like a poodle trimmed with dull clippers.

Sometimes you need to go through the pain of pruning to restore health. Controlled killing leads to restored life.

The story of Moses and the bronze serpent is about a time when the thing that brings death can also breathe life. It can be read in Numbers 21:4-9. Large portions of the Old Testament have a cyclical pattern describing the interaction between the People of God, Israel, and the Lord. The pattern is simple: The Israelites grumble; God sends a punishment; The Israelites repent, and the relationship is restored between the Lord and His people--until they grumble again. This particular vignette involves serpents that brought death. And a bronze serpent that brought life. Moses fashioned a bronze serpent, put it on a pole, and once an Israelite was bitten he or she could look to the bronze serpent and be healed. The Israelites were being killed by serpents and they had to look upon the instrument of their death to attain life. My tree was the same. The bagworm was slowly eating away at the tree. The solution is to cut away the infection so that it may live.

Chemo: Killing to Live

In Early August my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. Doctors, consultations, biopsies, and tests have all led to her specific treatment plan. She is 2 rounds into her chemotherapy treatment. And, thanks be to God, the tumor is already shrinking. But chemo isn't much different than my lopers or Moses' bronze snake. Each of them are used to inflict a certain amount of controlled killing. For the loppers on my tree--cutting away the branch is killing a portion of the tree so that it may better thrive. Looking to a bronze serpent after you just got bit by a serpent is an interesting method for God's healing. Perhaps the Lord was using the bronze serpent as a reminder of their disobedience and unfaithfulness. The living serpents brought the judgment while the bronze serpent brought healing--all the while continuing to remind them of their sinful behavior. God uses the image of judgment to bring about their healing. Chemotherapy is no different. The "medicine" has one objective--to kill the living things that are inside of you. Newsflash: Everything inside of you is living! But the brilliant men and women in the medical and pharmacy fields have figured out how to engineer these medications so that they attack the fast-growing cells. Cancer cells are, typically, fast-growing cells. So are the cells that make your hair grow. This is why I've got some great pictures of my niece as she is shaving the head of my sister. The Cancer, if unchecked, would kill her. The Chemotherapy that she--and so many others--are enduring is killing her too. Chemotherapy is pruning my sister. The instrument of death is our salvation.

The Real Tree that Prunes

And so it is with our lives as well. The instrument of death--the cross--has become the gateway into the fullest of lives. It was a tree in the garden that held a fruit that ruined the party for everyone. And it is a tree on a trash heap outside the holy city that killed us as it killed our savior Jesus. "That where death began, there life might be restored." And the greatest cancer of all, the evil serpent himself, thought that he had overcome the world with the biting of that fruit in a garden called Eden. Instead, he has been overcome through the surgical precision of pruning on our soul. The death of Christ has become the death of the old Adam at work in us. It is a holy Chemotherapy where an instrument of death--the cross--becomes our path to life. By and through Jesus, we are all Dying so that we might Live.

Keep fighting Soni. Those bagworms don't stand a chance!