Is Something Burning?
By Rob Wiltshire
Have you ever been driving along a road you consistently travel and for the first time notice something that has obviously been there for a long time?
You know those occasions. You finally see the house tucked back off the road in the trees slightly hidden from view. Or you notice the odd shaped tree or rock, that you would only see if you turned your head at the right time as you passed by.
What I find so fascinating about all of this is, when it happens you are certain that what you are looking at has only just appeared there now.
It’s crazy isn’t it. We can travel the same road every day, and still see something for the first time that has been there forever.
It’s like we go on auto piolet and coast through life, un-aware of what is around us. Which causes me to wonder; how much of God do we miss?
Moses had one of those moments, where he discovered something completely new about God for the first time in the burning bush in Exodus 3.
Exodus 3:1-4
3 One day Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and came to Sinai, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up.3 “This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.”
4 When the Lord saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
I don’t know how much you have thought of this story, but can I suggest spontaneous combustion isn’t a rarity.
Growing up in a farming community we’d hear stories every year of hay stacks bursting into flame without anyone lighting a match to them.
Plenty of our bush fires start without any human intervention.
Truth be told under the right conditions fires start with ease.
So the idea of Moses being bewildered about seeing a bush on fire in the desert is quite possibly a little off the mark.
In some Jewish circles the thought is that Moses was drawn to the bush not because it was on fire, but because he had passed by it time after time, and then all of a sudden noticed how it was always burning and not burning up.
Let me explain a little more. He always saw it, but now for the first time he was taking notice of it. A little bit like that house tucked back off the road slightly hidden by trees. You’d have seen it before, but now you have taken notice of it.
I wonder how often God is trying to get our attention, but we don’t take notice of the invitation to explore more?
We’ve all got questions. Questions about God, Christianity, life, morality, the church, etc. But we only receive answers to our questions when we draw into whatever burning bush it is that God has placed in front of us at the time.
I wonder what God keeps placing in your path for you to notice?
Perhaps it’s a person, a job, a scripture or perhaps it’s an idea. While I don’t know what God is placing in your path, what I do know is that God is placing something in your path, hoping you’ll press into to it allowing him — God — to talk with you about it.