MOSES, GOD, AND THE BURNING BUSH: CURIOSITY, REVERENCE, AND SURRENDERING TO OBEDIENCE
It might seem as if the words in the title of this post have nothing to do with one another. However, there is a story that has all of these components: the story of Moses and the burning bush. The story is found in Exodus 3-4 in the Bible.
Moses had been adopted in the court of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. (You might say that he had a “court-appointed” guardian, but you would only make such a bad pun if you have my particular brand of humor. For your sake, as well as for the sake of those around you, I hope that you don’t!)
Moses eventually got on the bad side of the king because Moses killed one of the king’s low-level officials. Kings don’t like it when someone murders one of their officials. Moses ran for his life.
Eventually, he got into the d.p.p. (desert protection program), which was a bit like the witness protection program. He assumed the identity of a shepherd in the Sinai Desert.
It was while he was taking care of the sheep that belonged to his father-in-law that Moses encountered a strange phenomenon: a bush that burned, but did not burn up. (See Exodus 3-4 for further details.)
Apparently, there wasn’t a lot of excitement in the desert. No t v, no Facebook or Twitter—in fact, no internet access at all! So, Moses decided that a burning bush that didn’t burn up was worth a look-see.
Moses didn’t hear the voice of God until he yielded to his curiosity. The biblical story is very clear about that. “When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush . . .” (Exodus 3:4). Apparently, one of the conditions for hearing the voice of God is curiosity.
But as soon as the LORD God saw that Moses was curious, God decided to take him to another level: reverence. “Don’t come any closer! Take off your sandals. The ground you are standing on is holy ground.”
Curiosity without reverence swiftly becomes irreverence. The difference between holy curiosity and garden-variety nosiness is the fear of the LORD. I’m afraid that I am often more curious than reverent. In fact, I would hazard a guess that this is true of our entire culture. Curiosity can lead to deep insight and profound growth. It can even lead to a life-changing life’s calling. Such a life-calling can transform our own lives and can, as with Moses, lead to the transformation of others. Many a transforming liberator has begun his difficult and unwilling journey by being curious, but the journey is continued and energized by reverence.
But then, comes the really hard part: obedience. Moses struggled with that one—a lot! In the face of God’s sending Moses back to Egypt, Moses tried to wiggle out of God’s call. Moses presented one excuse after another, until finally even the All-Patient One lost his patience with Moses.
But, in the end, Moses obeyed. And while postponed obedience is disobedience, when we finally do obey, it is still obedience. It’s not pretty, but it is obedience.
Curiosity, reverence, and obedience: They may not be the Holy Trinity, but they are important.
SERVING GOD, WITH SLEEP OR WITHOUT
I did not sleep well last night. I am reminded of two approaches to serving God. One comes from the New Testament, the other from Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim.
Paul, in defending his apostleship, boasts that he had served God “through many sleepless nights” (2 Corinthians 11:27).
I’m afraid that I don’t always use my sleeplessness to serve God or others. Instead, I use sleeplessness to serve as an excuse for being a self-serving so and so! (Truth hurts, but it also heals.)
But the question is, what will I do with my sleeplessness today? Will I be pleasant to people, or will be a member of that huge clan called “the Whiner Family?” Will I seek to glorify God, no matter how well or poorly I’ve slept?
Then, there is another story that goes in the opposite direction. It is the story of Rabbi Shmelke, one of the early Hasidim, who lived in Nikolsburg (a town in what is now called Moravia, near Austria). Rabbi Shmelke lived from 1726-1778. One of the wonderful stories about him involves sleep.
“Rabbi Shmelke did not want to interrupt his studies for too long a time, and so he always slept sitting up, his head resting on his arm. In his fingers he held a lit candle which roused him when it guttered and the flame touched his hand. When Rabbi Elimelekh visited him, and recognized the power of the holiness which was still locked within him, he prepared a couch for him and with great difficulty persuaded him to lie down for a little while. The he closed and shuttered the windows. Rabbi Shmelke slept until broad daylight. It did not take him long to notice this, but he was not sorry he had slept, for he was filled with a hitherto unknown sunny clearness. He went to the House of Prayer and prayed before the congregation as usual. But to the congregation it seemed that they had never heard him before. They were entranced and uplifted by the manifest power of his holiness. When he recited the verses about the Red Sea, they gathered up the hems of their kaftans for fear the waves towering to the left and right might wet them with salty foam. Later Shmelke said to Elimelekh: ‘Not until this day did I know that one can serve God with sleep’” (Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, volume 1, pp. 187-188).
So, according to Paul, God can be served and glorified in, and presumably by, sleeplessness. According to Rabbi Shmelke, God can be served in, and presumably by sleep. Who is right?
I am rather fond of the saying, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” The truth is this: Everything, when submitted to God, can glorify God. God can and will use everything to bless us. We can also use everything to serve God and others.
The only question is this: Will we choose to do so?
No, on second thought, that is not the question. The question is this: Will I choose to do so?
“ON READING ON WRITING: SERIOUSLY FUNNY”
I am trying to learn to be a writer—or, at least, a better one. So, I am doing two things: writing more and reading/listening to good writers more.
I am rereading Stephen King’s book On Writing. I am enjoying it even more this time.
I am trying to read the what of King’s writing, but also the how of his writing. How is he doing what he is doing with a particular word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, or story?
King uses wonderful metaphors in his stories. In fact, he uses a metaphor for his stories of his early childhood. He calls them “snapshots.”
Some of the snapshots are funny. Some are scary. Some are puzzling. Some are all of those and more at the same time.
But he also annotates his snapshots. His teenage babysitter when he was four used to fart in his face. King drolly comments that this prepared him for literary critics. Yes!
Everything is grist for the literary mill. But you have to know how to mill it. And that means grinding it out.
This involves, for me at least, a light touch with serious matters. I want to write seriously helpful stuff, but I don’t want to be morbidly obese about it.
I have noticed that the authors I like to read and reread are the ones who invite me to laugh, but also to do some serious thinking about important realities: life, death, what is important, relationships, politics, work.
The Old and New Testaments also make serious observations with irony and humor.
Yes, I do realize that irony and humor are different things. But, like sibling twins, they share at least some of the same dna.
Take Cain, for example. The story about him is found in Genesis 4. He kills his brother Abel. When God asks Cain where his brother is, Cain responds with a statement and a question, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?” I often hear people quote this saying, sometimes with approval. I wonder if they realize that they are quoting the first murderer, according to the Bible.
As part of the LORD God’s punishment, Cain is told that he will be a vagabond, a wanderer (näd, in Genesis 4:12). Yet the narrator who is telling the story says that Cain settled down in the Land of Wandering (nôd, Genesis 4:16). How on earth do you “settle down” in “the Land of Wandering?”
Precisely! The narrator wants us to see that, if we abuse or kill our brother, we will be exiled—even when we think we are settling down. As I heard one preacher say many years ago concerning the Lord’s Prayer, “We cannot say ‘Our Father,’ unless we are also willing to say, ‘Our brother.’”
So, the writers I like—whether ancient or modern—have some serious things to say, but they say those things with humor. That is the kind of writer I would like to be.
As has often been said, “Many a truth is uttered in jest.”
“On Hitting a Bump in the Road Instead of a Wall”
I had a very close call on the road last night.
I was coming home from waiting tables at Bob Evans, Kenwood. It had been raining, and I was coming down Muchmore Road near Plainville. I guess I took a curve too fast, and the curve very nearly took me. I lost control of the car, and was headed for a solid stone wall. If I had hit it, I would almost certainly have been seriously injured. Even a thirty-mile-per-hour collision with an immovable object is a serious matter when you’re driving a Hyundai Accent.
However, at the last second my wheels hit a large bump that I suppose was the edge of a concrete water diversion channel. This had two effects: It slowed the car a bit, and (more importantly) threw the car back onto the road. I drove the car home—slowly.
Sometimes life itself is like that. We are tooling along, driving too fast for road conditions. We lose control (or did we ever have control?), and are headed for a serious meeting with a solid wall and maybe a meeting with our Maker. But something diverts us at the last second. We hit a bump in the road that slows us down and throws us back on the road.
Perhaps we don’t actually see the wall we were about to hit. If we don’t, then we may curse the bump in the road. “Why did I not get that job?!” we ask. “Why did that person reject me?” we whine.
But it’s the bumps in the road that are often God’s messengers—our guardian angels, if you will—that save us.
So, today I will give thanks for all the bumps in my life. Who knows? They may all save me from a fatal crash.
“STRENGTHENING MYSELF IN THE LORD MY GOD”
1 Samuel 30:6 David was now in great danger because all his men were very bitter about losing their sons and daughters, and they began to talk of stoning him. But David found strength in the LORD his God. (New Living Translation)
I wasn’t feeling particularly strong this morning physically, emotionally, or spiritually. So, I thought of 1 Samuel 30:6.
A literal translation of that last sentence would be “And David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” It was something he did to himself. (For Hebrew students, the verb translated “strengthened” of “found strength” is a hithpa`el.)
We are told in 1 Samuel some of the things that had taken place up to this point. David had been on the run from King Saul for years. He had finally taken refuge with the Philistines, but they did not altogether trust him. He had offered to go to war on the side of his Philistine host. We are not told whether the offer was sincere or not. As is often the case, David’s motives are opaque.
David was sent back to the town he and his marauders had been given by the Philistines, Ziklag. However, as they drew near, all they saw was a pile of burned rubble. The Amalekites had raided Ziklag, and taken all the possessions and family members of David and his men. David’s men seem to have been very loyal to him generally, but loyalty has its limits. They were so devastated that “they began to talk of stoning” David.
But then, we are told that “David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.” We are not told how he did that, just that he did it.
How do you strengthen yourself in the LORD? I don’t really know, but I do have some suspicions. Here is what works for me.
- I strengthen myself by reading and meditating on the Scriptures. I am committed to reading the entire Bible through twice this year. Sometimes, the Word of God encourages me, sometimes it brings me up short, sometimes it just puzzles me, but it always strengthens me.
- I strengthen myself by other readings. I am rereading The Narnia Chronicles, for example. I also find Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim to be a continual source of strength. The Jesuits have a very helpful (and free!) “Three-Minute Retreat,” which you can sign up for through Loyola Press.
- My twelve-step meetings and brothers and sisters are extremely strengthening.
- I like Christian music. I like old hymns and modern Christian music, monastic chants and Promise Keepers’ favorites, instrumental and vocal music. I find that listening to such music makes me stronger.
- I remember what God has done in the past for others and for me. I am strengthened by these memories to believe that God will take care of my present struggles.
- I try to be of service to others. It may seem counterintuitive, but when I serve others, I find that my strength is not depleted, but rather that my strength is strengthened.
- Gratitude is also a wonderfully strengthening activity.
- Prayer can help a great deal. Prayer isn’t primarily about getting answers, at least it isn’t for me. Prayer is about acknowledging the reality of me and the Reality of God. When I am in touch with my reality and with the Reality of God, I find myself strengthened.
- The final way I strengthen myself in the LORD is to remember that weakness is not the problem. Indeed, weakness is a wonderful opportunity for God to work in my life. The Apostle Paul writes in NLT 2 Corinthians 12 about a thorn in the flesh that he had. He doesn’t tell us precisely what that thorn was, but he does tell us that he earnestly prayed to God that it would be taken away. Thorns in the flesh are no fun!
How did God answer Paul’s prayer? “Each time he said, ‘My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.’ So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.”
Weakness, when acknowledged and submitted to God, is the strongest form of strength.
“PUNCTUALITY, PATIENCE, AND PRACTICE”
KJV James 1:4: “But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
Sometimes I get exercise, even in areas that don’t relate to any part of my physical anatomy.
Take today at Planet Fitness as an example.
My wife and I went there to work out. Silver Sneakers is a wonderful program, in large part because it is free.
I had told my sweetheart that I was going to do a longer workout today, and perhaps she should take her Kindle or a book. “Are you going to go anywhere?” I asked. “No,” she replied.
However, as she finished her own workout, she asked if it would be okay for her to run over to Wal-Mart. “Sure,” I said. However, she decided to go to Kroger’s to pick up some groceries as well. So, I waited.
And waited . . .,
And WAITED!
Okay, so I didn’t really wait that long. Perhaps it was half-an-hour. However, since waiting time often seems longer than real time, it probably wasn’t even that long.
But here is the amazing thing: I really didn’t get terribly upset.
That might not be amazing for a normal human being, but I am not usually a normal human being. I can’t tell you the number of times (but it was a lot) that I have gotten furious about these kinds of things in the past. I said harsh, hurtful things that I later regretted. I’ve wasted hours pouting, making both my sweetheart and me unhappy. When the kids were little, they also had to witness my multiple temper tantrums. What an absolute jackass I was!
So, while I was glad for my response this time, this little incident helped me to acknowledge how wrong I had been in the past. I asked my sweetheart’s forgiveness, and she graciously gave it.
Another thing: As I reflected on this little non-drama, I realized that I was actually continuing my exercise program. I was exercising patience as I waited for my wife to pick me up. Virtues are gifts from God. They are, however, gifts which need to be unwrapped and exercised for them to be able to grow and do their job.
The real issue wasn’t punctuality at all. The real issue was patience. Today, I bench-pressed a few pounds, but it’s a beginning. Tomorrow, perhaps I’ll be able to bench a bit more. Opportunities for patience abound. I just have to make good use of them.
“And the Word for the Year is ‘Focus’”
I got off to a bit of a rough start in this day and this New Year.
I couldn’t find my keys for a while, and then I discovered them in the door where I had left them, when my sweetheart and I came home last night. (Security is so important to me!)
Then, it took me three attempts to send out the daily challenges to some of my students who meet with me once a week to read the Old Testament in Hebrew. You want to hear the details, you say? No, you probably don’t, but I’ll tell you anyway. After some preliminary words in the e mail, I forgot to paste the challenges in the e mail before I hit the send button. I quickly realized the error of my ways, and prepared to send another e mail with the challenges. I was typing an explanation as to why I hadn’t sent them the first time when I accidentally sent the e mail—without the challenges. Finally, on the third time, I succeeded in sending the challenges. Sending challenges proved to be quite a challenge.
Here is the irony of the situation. Jon Gordon encourages his readers to come up with one word to set the tone for their year. (See http://www.jongordon.com/blog/one-word-that-will-change-your-life-2/.) It sounded like a good idea.
It took me a while, but I finally settled on the word “FOCUS.” Perhaps focusing on focus sounded good to me because I struggle so much with staying focused on the things that really matter: my relationship with God, my devotion to my wife, being good to others and myself, using my gifts properly.
So, how do I plan to be focused? Well, dear readers, I am open to suggestions. But here are some things that help me stay better focused. At least they help when I remember to practice them.
- Gratitude helps me to focus on what is important. When I focus on being grateful, I tend to be more focused on what really matters to me. Furthermore, I am more likely to be on the lookout for important things to be grateful for. Sometimes, those important things can seem little, but they often turn out to be little components of very large and important things.
- Accountability to and with friends helps me to stay focused on what really matters. Of course, my friends themselves matter. But they also help me to realize what other things I need to focus on.
- Slowing down helps me to realize what is truly focus on. If I let my life become a blur, I can’t really focus on much of anything. However, I am responsible for my own blurry living.
- While they are often despised, I find to-be-and-to-do lists helpful. I write things down, but then I need to take another step. I need to pray and ask God what God wants me to do. Otherwise, I may be wasting my time focusing on things that aren’t really worth the bother.
One final thought: Focus is a choice. I have Attention Deficit Disorder, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t focus, only that it may be more difficult for me to focus.
Opening the Shutters Wide
A comrade in the struggle against addiction gave me a wonderful metaphor today for how to look at our life. One of our topics was sharing our experience, hope, and strength concerning how to move beyond our own limited perceptions of our own selves.
One brother, Frank (not his real name) said, “Sometimes, I think I’m opening the shutters of my mind just a crack, and looking out on reality. But the problem is that I am just seeing all the ways I’ve harmed myself and others.”
We all nodded. Non-addicts sometimes fear that people acknowledge their “addiction” (if there is really even such a thing, according to the very skeptical), in order to excuse their own destructive choices. I would not deny that there are those who use addiction language in that manner. However, what I have experienced—as well as I’ve noticed about my fellow-addicts—is that twelve-step recovery programs generally tend to heighten the realization of the radical, multiple harms we’ve done.
So, our real problem is that we tend to think of ourselves as addicts and nothing else.
. . . Well, back to the comments Frank was making. He wasn’t quite finished. His next contribution brought me up short. Probably did the same for several others. Our nodding heads suddenly became cocked heads as we listened to Frank say something many of us had not thought of. Or perhaps, we had simply forgotten.
“But then, I open the shutters wider, and I see more of the landscape. And what I see is still the evils I’ve done, but I also see a lot of good things I’ve done.”
Of course, my sweet wife has often reminded me of all the good things I’ve done over the years. Some friends have tried to tell me as well.
However, for the past several weeks, I’ve been struggling with a depression deeper than any I’ve experienced for a long time. So, perhaps I was just needier and open to hearing this truth this morning. Suddenly, the shutters of my mind were thrown wide open!
Here is the truth: None of us is a bag of gold. None of us is a total dirt bag. What all of us are is a mixed bag. Humility doesn’t mean opening the shutters only enough to hate ourselves for the very real wrongs we’ve done. Humility is throwing open the shutters wide, and seeing what is really there—everything, the good bad, and the search-me-stuff.
And perhaps, running fast across the landscape, we may see a loving Father, running toward us to rescue all of his scared little adults and children, who are his prodigal children.
Live Like You’re Loved
Have you ever given up your place in a long line to someone else? I have had some people do that for me. Occasionally, I’ve done it for others.
When I am in line, I’ve gone through several stages in terms of my attitude toward my fellow-waiters. My first stage was, “Hey! We’re all in a hurry, and none of us likes waiting in this line! You can wait your turn like the rest of us!”
Stage 2: “Here, you can get behind me!”
Stage 3: “Here, you can get in front of me!”
Finally, I realized the obvious truth that you, dear reader, probably have seen already—namely, that unless I was letting a person who was right behind me go in front of me, I was being courteous to one person, while being discourteous to all the others who were originally in front of that particular person.
So, I moved to stage 4: “Here, you can take my place, and I’ll go back to your place in line.
Jon Steingard, lead singer of the group Hawk Nelson, said (concerning their song “Live Like You’re Loved”), “When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, he didn’t just take our place. He gave us his place.” I’ve often realized that Jesus died in our place. It was a totally new thought to me that Jesus also gave us his place.
Well, perhaps it was not totally new. I had encountered it before. Perhaps the thought just sunk in more deeply than it had before.
Actually, this is precisely the thought Paul expresses in Ephesians 2:4-6.
“But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so much, that even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s grace that you have been saved!) For he raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus.”
If Jesus gave me—and potentially, the whole world—his place, this would include some things I most definitely do not want: denying self for the sake of others, suffering, the cross. The cross cannot be edited out of the Jesus story. It can’t be edited out of the lives of Jesus-followers either.
Of course, suffering is inevitable in this world, whether we are Christ-followers or not. However, those of us who are followers of the Crucified One believe that suffering can be redemptive. Certainly, we believe that about Christ. But we also believe that even our own suffering can be redemptive.
But there is another truth, beyond the suffering. Christ died for us so that we might have his place. And what is Christ’s place? It is the place of the Son, beloved of his heavenly Father. Hebrews 2:11 says that Christ is not ashamed to call his brothers and sisters. Often, I am ashamed to call Christ my brother, but brotherhood goes both ways. If he can and does call me his brother, then I can do the same with him.
So, we were in this long line. It was not at the check-out counter. It was the check-in counter. We were in a long line stretching through time and space. It included everyone in the world. We were waiting to check into hell.
And then, Jesus comes along and says, “Here, I’ll take your place.”
So, Jesus took our sins (which may well be another name for “hell,” in my opinion), and gave us his own place in the Father’s loving heart.
I can indeed “live like I’m loved,” because I am loved. And you can live that way too.
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