Elizabeth Barrett Browning writes that “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God.” Gerald Manley Hopkins declares that “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil”. I have a Japanese Maple in my front yard and for a few short weeks every year, it shimmers in orange and gold and red, my own personal burning bush.

I thought of these poets on Thursday night as I watched the sturgeon moon partial eclipse and reflected on today’s reading from the book of Exodus. I also thought of two bright stars who brought joy and light into the world and departed it this week; the singer, Dolly Parton and the Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama; both “burning bushes” in their own unique ways. Which got me wondering: maybe burning bushes are not unique to Moses. Perhaps others passed the burning bush without noticing it, but only Moses stopped and turned aside.

Maybe the real miracle wasn’t that it was not consumed by fire, but that Moses turned aside and saw it, really saw it. Maybe the question is do we notice burning bushes, so we stop and pay attention, or do we keep walking?

Burning bushes are those circumstances or events that interrupt life and grab our attention. They take us by surprise. They stop us in our tracks and cause us to turn aside. We take a second look.

Moses never expected or planned on being the one to bring God’s people out of Egypt. His expectation of what life was supposed to be was interrupted.

God said to Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people. I have heard their cry. I know their suffering, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians.” But listen to what God says to Moses next.

“I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of the land of Egypt.”  

God is going to deliver God’s people by sending Moses. Moses is to make real and enact God’s desire for Gods people. What if that’s how God is working in our lives too? Others passed by the burning bush but did not turn aside? What if they too were to have given existence to God’s call, God’s insistence, that the Israelites be freed from Egypt? I wonder when you and I have not turned aside. When have we failed or refused to respond to the call on our lives? 

The burning bush story is one of call and response. Something is being called for in the name of God. And I can’t help but believe that call and response is also the story of our lives. Something is being asked of us in the name of God. 

The burning bush experience does not happen apart from everyday life but in the midst of it. Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law. He was doing the ordinary routine things of his life, the same things he did the day before, the week before, and the month before. Burning bushes show up as we live our daily lives; marriage, parenting, grandparenting, work, friendships, errands, church, watching the news, household tasks. 

What is interrupting, disrupting, erupting, in your life today and asking for a response? What is being called for? How will you respond? 

This is where I often get stuck; on the response. What’s the right response? I want to get it right, don’t you? But what if there isn’t one right answer? What if we can’t know for sure? What if the “right” response is whatever brings forth life, more life, new life? And what if that looks different in each of our lives? 

What if being right isn’t even the point? How does Moses know if he’ll get it right? He doesn’t. He doesn’t know any more than we do. There will, however, be a sign. The sign, God says, will come after the people have been delivered, not before. It’s as if God is saying “you’ll look back on all this and see I was there all along”. And isn’t that a pretty accurate description of life? We live life forward, uncertain and not knowing, but we only begin to understand and make sense of it in retrospect. 

What if there are no guarantees and the best, the most, we can do is to respond in hope, loving and “faithing” our way forward? What if that’s how we approached every burning bush in our life? And what if we saw “every common bush afire with God?”

The Moses in my heart trembles

Not quite ready to let the prophet in me emerge.

O child of unnecessary shoes, take them off

and stand in readiness on this awe-fully holy ground.

For the Egypt in people’s hearts demands that you see burning bushes,

Aflame and burning wildly, away from the safety of well protected feet.

Take off your shoes for the ground you stand on is holy.

Believe in your inner Moses and go…..    Amen.

Ministries
Faith in Formation