How does God usually get your attention? How does He interrupt your daily routines to try to tell you something or get you to do something you need to do? Does He use the voice of your conscience to chasten you, to redirect your words and actions? Have you been stopped in your tracks by a medical diagnosis, accident, death, financial crisis, or loss of a job? Perhaps it hasn’t been as dramatic as what Moses experienced while shepherding on the Mountain of God, but I think we can all agree that God has His way of getting us to pay attention to Him.
When we think of Moses’ experience, we generally refer to it as the “burning bush,” and it was certainly a burning bush, probably some kind of thorn bush. From what I’ve learned, the dramatic language used to describe the fire suggests that it was not just burning, but blazing! Not smoldering, or simply burning, but blazing. This fire was intended to arouse attention, evoke questions, and prompt investigation. Blazing!
Here is what Exodus 3:2-3 says about how God got Moses’ attention. “And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, ” I must turn aside now, and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.”
The “angel of the Lord” uses the flaming bush to speak to Moses. We will focus on the angel in the next post, but as for now, let’s investigate the flaming bush with Moses.
First, God used fire, a blazing fire, to disrupt Moses’ routine. God could have gotten his attention through a bolt of lightning, an earthquake, or anything He wished to use, but He chose a bush that wasn’t being destroyed by an intense flame. The Bible uses fire to symbolize many things: the judgment of God, God’s unmatchable purity and brilliance, His powerful purifying presence, and lots of other things. But what did this blazing flame mean to Moses? On one level, I think it was simply a “marvelous sight” that stunned him and got his attention. Moses, like many of us, didn’t see this event that broke his routine as having a deeper meaning or anything to do with God. Upon further examination and thought, we sometimes come to realize that what is happening to us has a deeper spiritual meaning for us. But first, God has to get our attention; that’s what God was doing with Moses. Is something happening in your life that you need to stop and examine? Is God trying to get your attention?
Second, in his experience with the blazing bush, Moses moves from simply seeing this as a “marvelous sight” to experiencing God himself in the midst of his daily work. Forty years ago, Moses had taken it upon himself to be the deliverer of his fellow Hebrews. No doubt, the plight of the enslaved Israelites had haunted him as he spent many lonely days and nights shepherding Jethro’s flock. When the time was right, God contacted him in the midst of his everyday duties to alter the entire course of his life, continuing the promise He had made to Abraham over four centuries earlier.
How has God interrupted your everyday experiences to bring a deeper understanding of your greater purpose in life? What has been your “blazing bush” experience? What events has God orchestrated to save you, to change the course of your life?
You are important to God. You may think that you will live out your days in boring routines, but God has a way of getting our attention and giving real meaning and purpose in ordinary things. We have to look for what He may be telling us and find ways to serve Him by serving others.
Moses wasn’t looking for a blazing bush, and was not likely thinking about going back to Egypt to free his people, but God had big plans for him, and arrested his attention through a blazing bush. It’s unlikely that God will do something that dramatic to get our attention, but through our health issues, financial troubles, loss of friends and family members, the needs of others we encounter, and as we open our lives to the Spirit in prayer and meditation on Scripture.
God has plans for you. Moses needed a burning bush, and Paul needed a light from heaven to stop them in their tracks and to get their attention. You don’t need that. All you need to do is ask God for an assignment every day, and He will have something for you to do.