“God of Burning
Bushes and Other Surprises” by Colleen O’Sullivan
Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law
Jethro, the priest of Midian. Leading
the flock across the desert, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There an angel of the LORD appeared to him in
fire flaming out of a bush. As he looked
on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed. So, Moses decided, "I must go over to
look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush is not burned." When the LORD saw him coming over to look at
it more closely, God called out to him from the bush, "Moses! Moses!" He answered, "Here I am." God said, "Come no nearer! Remove the
sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. I am the God of your father," he
continued, "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. (Exodus 3:1-6)
Piety
O God of Moses, God of surprises,
may the eyes and ears of my heart ever be open to encountering you.
Study
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| By Gebhard Fugel - Own work (fotografiert in der Ausstellung "Gebhard Fugel 1863-1939. Von Ravensburg nach Jerusalem". Galerie Fähre, Altes Kloster, Bad Saulgau, 2014), Public Domain, (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32072413) |
Who would have thought
God would select Moses to do anything great?
Moses was a murderer fleeing the law.
He was hiding out in his father-in-law’s fields, working as a
shepherd. Moses, astonishingly, had been spared when Egyptians
were supposed to drown any Hebrew male babies into the Nile. Not only was he spared, but he was brought up
by Pharaoh’s daughter. Moses lived a
life of relative luxury in Egypt until the day he killed an Egyptian who was
mistreating his Hebrew worker.
We all know the story of
Moses and the burning bush. Moses sees
this crazy phenomenon and moves closer to investigate. How can fire burn without consuming even a
leaf? He probably gets the fright of his
life when he hears God calling to him, telling him to remove his sandals,
because he’s standing on holy ground.
Even crazier is what the voice says:
I’m going to send you to Pharaoh’s land to free my people. What?!
Moses wants to stay away from Egypt to save himself from imprisonment. All in all, this is unbelievable! God, however, assures him it’s very real and
that God will be with him every step of the way.
David Whyte, a poet, captures
Moses’ encounter with God and every encounter with God since as the time when your
house (and everything else familiar) collapses and is demolished, so “the road
(can) open again.”1 When God encounters us, God wants the old to
disappear. God wants us to be
transformed, to travel the road God shows us, not the path we’ve already been
down. I’m sure Moses’ life was never the
same after the day he came upon that burning bush.
God is forever seeing
things that need doing. And sometimes, if
not already, God is going to stop you or me in our tracks and tell us it’s up
to us. God actually has something for each
of us to do. Maybe we won’t stumble upon
a burning bush, but once God encounters us, we will be transformed. Our lives will never be the same again. And that’s okay because God never sends us
out alone. God walks beside us every
step of the way.
Action
I’ve never heard God speak
from the midst of a burning bush, but I have felt God take hold of my life and ask
something of me, and I’ve seen the old road destroyed before I’ve had a chance
to assent to the new. At the moment, it
can be very scary, but when God walks beside you, things always have a way of
working out.
What about you? When have you felt God change the direction of
your life? What was your response? These might be good questions to take to
prayer today.
1 David Whyte. Fire in the Earth.
Many Rivers Press, 1992.
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