The Vaccine They Feared

In April 1955, parents across America faced an agonizing choice. Polio had terrorized their families for decades — paralyzing children, filling iron lungs, closing swimming pools every summer. Now Jonas Salk stood before the nation offering a vaccine made from the poliovirus itself. The very pathogen that had crippled thousands of children was the basis of the cure.

Many parents hesitated. How could you trust an injection that contained the thing you feared most? Yet those who lined their children up at school gymnasiums and church basements, who rolled up small sleeves and held small hands, discovered that Salk was right. Within years, polio cases dropped by ninety-six percent. The disease that had haunted a generation was nearly erased — by a remedy drawn from the disease itself.

When venomous serpents swept through the Israelite camp in Numbers 21, God did not remove the snakes. He did not build a wall around the people or hand Moses a medicine bag. Instead, He told Moses to fashion a bronze serpent — an image of the very creature killing them — and raise it on a pole. The cure looked exactly like the affliction. All anyone had to do was look up and trust the word of the Lord.

God has always worked this way. He meets us in the middle of the thing we fear, transforms it, and says, "Look here. Trust Me. Live."