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THE BURNING BUSH
Judith Deem Dupree
The Burning Bush
You are Moses; I am Moses. We grew up in Egypt, with a bone-deep yearning for the spiritual ancestry that is carried in our Blood. And when we came to a certain age, which varies for each of us, we knew we were strangers in a land that was not ours. We could not escape our Birthright, could not escape the shadow of YAHWEH that dogged us from the moment we were snatched up by the world.
Perhaps, like Moses himself, we looked beyond our door and struggled against injustice, against the abuses we saw or experienced - the ways of the world that bring such grief to God’s own. Moses killed for such reasons. We too have "killed" in our passion or despair, adding to the murderous thoughts and words that infect mankind -- adding torment to our grief, sin to our anguish.
Moses fled. And so did we, in some way, for various reasons, to a desert region of God’s choosing. And it is there He prepared us, humbling us, teaching us patience and acceptance and the simplicity of rest within the soul.
When the time was ripe, when Kairos was come, Moses became what God had always intended: the one who led His people out of bondage. It could not have happened without the burning bush, without the subsequent conversations between the man Moses and his Father. The angry young man had been chastened and humbled to the point of "incoherence." Now God could speak through him; now God could speak TO him. Now God could interrupt the natural and normal course of events, and manifest His power and authority over humankind. This was something Moses had never reckoned with before.
Nor did Saul of Tarsus. He consented to murder - an accomplice, as we term it - because His faith was placed on the law as he knew it. Nothing could dissuade him from protecting the law of Moses. Especially not the heretical testimony of a small band of renegade Jews who threatened to destroy what this respected scholar knew was the Way of JAHWEH.
And whereas Moses’ eyes were forever "seared" by the fire of God, Saul’s eyes were blinded. Three days of darkness, entombed within his own miserable soul, and Paul was led to one of his erstwhile enemies to receive not only the healing of his eyes, but the opening of his spiritual sight.
A burning bush . . . a blinding flash of Light. Two men who had walked in darkness suddenly spoke with the eloquence of angels (despite Moses’ protests of inarticulateness). Upon these two testimonies of faith rest the two testaments of the two great religions. Two mighty generals in God’s army…
And we who are merely foot soldiers in the army of God, what does this have to do with us? Simply that to each of God’s warriors comes a moment of Truth when the earthly weapons clatter in the dust, when the human viewpoint falters before the great I AM, when the vengeance and the mercy is no longer ours, but His. And the language changes from this moment forth.
We have all been Moses on his way up Mt. Horeb, before the holy Fire burst before him. We have struck many a blow for justice, fled our enemies, suffered in grumbling silence at the traps we were trapped in by others’ cunning or insensitivity, and yearned for a voice that would break the neck of oppression. But God says, "Take off your shoes; you are standing on holy ground," and we are silenced until He has His way within us. Until our yearnings are stilled and we can hear the song within, until we know what "holy" truly IS.
We are all Saul, struggling for the faith of our fathers, cutting others down to size, berating (silently, most of the time) those who do not see as we see. We have forfeited our sense of the eternal and immediate Word of God for our own entrenched persuasions, our own secret yearnings to be right, to be regarded, to perhaps defend the faith unto death.
May we each have a burning bush, a striking of Light to change us - that our words and works will be engendered first, crafted second. That our stammering lips and clumsy hands and struggling hearts will be recreated in an act of Genesis -- and another and another - and that from our lives will flow something unique and convicting and convincing, full of the savor of God. To this kind of speaking there is no specious answer; to this witness there is no argument that can stand. This is the Word made flesh, revealed, sent forth to break the power of evil, to gather His sheep.
The Song of Moses . . . Paul at Mars Hill -- impossible without the Fire and the Light.
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