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Dear Friends:
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Ex. 3:1-6).
This the first of a series of messages on Moses’ experience with the burning bush. I wrote these meditations five years ago, but I have been reflecting on the story again for lessons on leadership.
A prince became an exile. A talented, but proud and brash man found himself alone on the far edge of the wilderness tending someone else’s sheep. It took forty years of triumph and forty more years of humbling mundane labor for the man to come to the place where he could see God in a bush.
We look for God in the extraordinary. Celebrity testimony is prized. Left to our human devices, we would place Moses at the top of the government where he could wield influence and witness for God, but God would develop the leader before placing him in leadership.
What could Moses do for God in the palace of the Pharaoh? He could change the course of history, but only on his second visit after a long apprenticeship of desolation. His vision changed looking for forage and water for sheep in a land of rocks and sand. He came to consider “abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward” (Heb 11-26).
Moses came to see grace in the ordinary. He turned off the beaten path to look for God. He was willing to take off his shoes to feel the reality of gritty sand and sharp rocks made holy by the presence of the Lord. The former man of authority and action, learned to pray in the desert. He bowed his head and covered his face in reverence for the God who brought him to new life in the heritage of blessing. He was now ready to lead God’s people. There is much for us to learn from his experience.
The monks of the Monastery of St. Catherine’s on Mount Sinai have claimed for 1600 years that they house the real “burning bush” on their grounds. It’s a raspberry-like, brambly, fast growing shrub from the mountains of Central Asia belonging to the species Rubus Sanctus. It’s very rare in the desert. The monks believe that its red berries appeared to Moses to be flames, but the monastery’s bush doesn’t bear fruit so the alleged conditions cannot be replicated. The monks argue over whether their bush sprouted from the root system of the bush that Moses saw or was replanted in the tenth century at its current location. In any case, they venerate the bush and water and fertilize it with goat droppings.
A fascinating account of the Monastery’s claim was written by Bruce Feiler in Walking the Bible [New York: HarperCollins, 2001, p. 224-248]. Feiler describes his visit to the bush in colorful terms.
Directly across the walkway was a rounded stone wall about ten feet high that looked as if it were made of peanut brittle. Sprouting from the top was an enormous, fountaining bush. The plant was about six feet tall, with large, dangling branches like a weeping willow that sprouted from the center like a cheap wig. A white cat with a brown splotch around one eye was perched at the base of the bush, and off to the side was a slightly out-of-date fire extinguisher. A fire extinguisher? At first I thought it was an eyesore, but then I realized the unintended humor. Was this in case the burning bush caught on fire? (p. 229).
After 3100 years, transplantation and being cut down to the roots in 1948 when the monks thought it looked sickly, one would expect to find any vestiges of the Divine’s presence in the bush to be eradicated.
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Tags: A Word of Grace, Devotional, General
