Reforesting FaithSample

“The Burning Bush”

Today’s Scripture reading gives us one of the most famous stories in the Bible: the one with Moses standing in front of a burning bush. 

To do a historical recap, four centuries passed after Jacob and his family settled in Egypt, and the number of their adult male descendants grew from seventy to six hundred thousand. In the intervening years the Hebrew people became slaves under a cruel pharaoh. Moses, the son of Hebrew parents, killed an Egyptian slave master and ran away to Midian. Forty years later, God reached out to the exiled Moses using an unusual sign. Moses was out tending the flock on the western slope of Mount Horeb when he saw a peculiar sight.

The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. 

He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:2–4, esv)

Why did God use a humble bush? Why didn’t God call to Moses from a towering tree? The image of God speaking from a lowly bush reminds me of a father stooping down to talk to his small children. This imagery of God using small trees or lowly bushes to speak to his people repeats itself in Scripture.

What I find intriguing, however, is the comment Moses made to himself: “I will turn aside to see this great sight.” The sight is a bush burning, not a forest fire. Yet Moses saw the sight and turned aside. What if he had been staring at his cell phone? One of the dangers of not pausing to appreciate the glories of creation—including the trees in God’s world and God’s Word—is that we limit our ability to appreciate what God is up to.

Also, note that God did not speak to Moses until Moses noticed the burning bush. If we want to hear from God, we need to pay attention to miracles that God places in front of us.

What if we don’t need more wonders? What if we need a greater sense of wonderment?