Burning Bushes

I was challenged by this question in my reading this week: where are the burning bushes in my life?

Moses grew up in leisure and power and opulence, quite possibly hearing the story of his own ‘rescue’ from a life of back-breaking slavery, misery and lost heritage. In fact, he would have died with all the other boys his age, if Pharaoh’s daughter hadn’t taken him in. If I put myself in his shoes, I would struggle to contain a deep and painful ambivalence toward who God made me, and toward the people who bore me — those who suffered cruelty from the same hands that saved me. How could I enjoy privileged rescue, marred with survivor guilt? Why am I alive and well, while so many innocent others are dead, or living a nightmare? I would long to enjoy the freedom, power and prestige, but to do so, I would be forced to kill my own soul.

This split in Moses finally came out sideways, as deep crises of faith so often do. Finally, he could no longer ‘manage’ the dissonance, and it took him 40 years in the wilderness before he was ready to ‘turn aside and see the wonder’ of the burning bush. (Gen. 3; Acts 7) Moses had been so consumed by the fire of anger that he killed an Egyptian and fled – yet here was a bush on fire without being consumed. I wonder if, even before God spoke, Moses saw his own deep question in the picture before him? How can I burn with zeal without being consumed by it?

These questions deserve our attention: Where are the burning bushes in my life? Where is God’s grace awaiting my notice, my willingness to set aside the daily chores of shepherding and attend to what he is showing me? What is God saying and doing among the ordinary, sometimes tiresome, predictable chores of everyday life? And how can I burn with zeal without being harmed, or harming others?

God, points out Ruth Haley Barton in Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, did not speak until Moses stopped long enough to be curious. “There seemed to be a cause-and-effect relationship between Moses’ willingness to pay attention and God’s willingness to speak. ‘When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush’ (Exodus 3:4). God spoke because Moses stopped, paused, noticed, turned aside.” (pg. 61)

Where is God at work, doing something to rivet your attention, but you are too busy to turn aside? Are you so busy ‘serving God’ that you don’t have time to listen? Is a burning bush in the middle of your life just one more distraction – or worse, one more fire that needs to be put out? One of my friends likes to say that the ministry is the interruptions, and perhaps that’s the case with burning bushes. Perhaps the God we are so busy ministering for would like us to minister to him by paying attention to where he is interrupting us. It’s my prayer today that God forbid us to throw a bucket of water on the fire he has built — not to consume, but from which he wants to speak.