Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Shelley Schurch
Sunday, November 17, 2024
“Look! Flames!” I paused in delight as we approached a neighbor’s front yard on our morning walk. “It’s a burning bush!”
We’d walked by this yard twice a day for many days, and I’d never noticed this knee-high bush. But on this day its slender grass seemed to shoot upward in flame, and I was a fan.
It makes me uncommonly happy to notice something that reminds me of God, and His friends. It also makes me smile to think how these unsuspecting neighbors might react if they knew I saw a scene from the Bible in their garden.
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.”
When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:1-4 NIV)
God cautions him not to come any closer, and to take off his sandals, because he is standing on holy ground. He introduces Himself as “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”
Moses is afraid to look at Him, and his emotions are further roiled as God explains that He has seen the misery of His people in Egyptian slavery and is coming to rescue them and to bring them into “a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” The kicker is that God is now sending Moses to appear before mighty Pharaoh to accomplish this rescue.
(Gulp.) Moses is no doubt regretting he ever noticed the burning bush. He pushes back in an amazing exchange with the almighty God of heaven. He is full of questions and protestations. (See Exodus 3 and beyond to follow the story, because we have to get back to the burning bush.)
This week I’ve continued to ponder burning bushes. I asked myself what have been the burning bushes in my life, and I immediately thought of one, but it wasn’t mine. It was my husband’s. With his permission, I tell a brief account of it here.
We had been married about a year, when I woke up in the middle of the night to find my husband sobbing beside me. I was frightened. He was the most mellow of men, always upbeat, looking on the bright side – so what was this?
I didn’t know and he didn’t know. It looked like darkness to us, but it turned out to be a burning bush. As a result, within the year he made the transition from college English teacher to seminary student, on the firm path to pastoral ministry.
I see at least four characteristics of Moses’ burning bush. It was unexpected, it caught his attention, it was from God, and it was a call.
My husband’s burning bush shared all four characteristics. However, there were some differences. The most important one was that God called Moses to take clearly-described immediate action as He changed his life. In my husband’s case it took prayer and time and counsel with wise and trusted people to discern God’s call, away from a life in which he had been well content — first into the wilderness of uncertainty and confusion, and then into a life richer than we could ever have planned and imagined.
And me and my burning bushes? I think of one that blazed brightly during my college years, when late one Friday night I read the Gethsemane chapter in The Desire of Ages by Ellen G. White. At my roommate’s request I had started reading aloud to her, and even though she dozed off after the first few paragraphs, I continued reading aloud. (Apparently this was not her burning bush.)
When I finished the chapter, I closed the book, laid my head down on it, and cried as if my heart was broken, because it was. Hearing how Jesus struggled alone in agonized, blood-sweating prayer; how he was betrayed and denied by the closest of friends; and how he chose to go to the cross for people like me – for me – was a burning bush. It was unexpected, it caught my attention, it was from God, and it was a call.
Not a call to leave college and strike out on another path, but a clear, compelling call to respond to His love, and to choose to stay close to Him always.
Our young people’s Pathfinders club planned and presented our worship service this Sabbath. I grinned wide when I saw the prop in the middle of the platform – a burning bush.
It’s a mild version of what must have been an incredible, wild sight that caught Moses’ attention centuries ago. Maybe not all of our burning bush experiences are as dramatic as the three I’ve mentioned. Maybe anytime God does something to catch our attention is a small burning bush flickering in our face.
I just thought of a fifth characteristic of a burning bush – it’s fueled by love. God kindles these flames because He loves us. I’ve heard that love means paying attention. So this week, I’ll be on the lookout. You, too?