It was a day like so many other days in the 40 years he’d been shepherding sheep. Everyday had to look really similar. The weather, the scenery, and the job… get the sheep up the mountain, get them fed, keep them safe… then take them to the next spot and do it all over again.
Forty years he had been doing this, and you have to figure that Moses had settled in; that he had to be thinking this is what life is going to be, and this is how things are going to play out. But then, on a day like so many other days, something radical happened and everything changed.
Coming down the mountain on this day, Moses noticed a burning bush, and turned aside to see the sight. When I was preparing a talk on this incredible story in Exodus 3, it struck me that perhaps the significant moment in this story happens in Verse 4: “When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called him from the midst of the bush…” You get this sense that maybe that bush was burning all along and that God was waiting for Moses, waiting for him to turn aside, to move away from the task at hand and listen to what God was going to say. That is pretty incredible when you think about it. Seemingly out of nowhere on what looked like a very ordinary day, Moses was given the mission of his life; the mission that made sense out of all the events, seasons and themes to his life at that point.
It makes me hope and ache for God to show up. I need that right now. It makes me wonder as well if there are some places in my life that I am missing it. Places, times, moments, where I need to slow down, get off the beaten path, turn aside and and just listen.
