Wednesday, January
4, 2017
One day Moses
was tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock far into the wilderness and
came to Sinai, the mountain of God.
There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire
from the middle of a bush. Moses stared
in amazement. Though the bush was
engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up. “This
is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why
isn’t that bush burning up? I must go
see it.” When the Lord saw
Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the
bush, “Moses! Moses!” “Here I am!” Moses
replied. “Do not come any closer,” the Lord warned.
“Take off your sandals, for you are
standing on holy ground. Exodus 3:1-5(NLT)
Moses was drawn to the fire
of God like a moth to a bulb on a Savannah night. Not so for my friend Paul, who told me a
story about his youthful battle against the darkness. As a young man Paul didn’t own a car, so after
night-fall he was walking home along Little Beane Store Road. It was so dark the only way he could be
positive he was still following the road was to feel the rough places at the
roadside under his bare feet. At one
point he fell because he’d stepped on something that felt slick and rope-like. Fearing the worst he jumped up and stomped
the unknown dark, slithering evil several times, and then ran home like the
wind.
In the morning Paul returned
to the battlefield to see exactly what he’d killed. When he got to the spot of the nighttime
struggle he discovered his vanquished foe in the grass beside the road – one very
mangled corn stalk!
Battling the unknown is a
metaphor for coming to terms with the fear we have because of the darkness around
and within us. Paul’s youthful fear
imagined a reptile laying in wait for him on that summer night. Living in rural North Carolina with corn,
greens, and food growing everywhere, the reality of snakes on the hunt for a
meal became larger because of the eerie feeling you get walking alone in the
dark.
Moses had his own battle with
the darkness, coming to terms with the fact that he really wasn’t an Egyptian
prince; that was just what people thought.
Moses had to contend with his real DNA – he was a Hebrew, and the God of
the slaves was his
God. Talk about stepping on a snake in
the dark.
But then the God of Abraham’s
flock called to Moses from a bush that was on fire, but wouldn’t burn
down. Moses was drawn to the fire,
curious and unafraid. But that was before
God spoke – this is holy ground, take
off your shoes! It is my firm
belief that one sentence is where Moses developed his stutter!
To his credit, Moses didn’t
run from God like my friend Paul ran from the snake. (Had it been me that night, I’d still be
running!) But Moses’ encounter was with
the light of a burning bush; that’s different than running from a snake in the
night. The real fight for Moses that day
was not the light, but the darkness within.
Moses had to deal with the fear that this God who does everything in the
light might consume him because of the darkness inside Moses. After all, when light comes, darkness has to go!
That’s the real fear most
people have when it comes to drawing near God.
After all, we know
what fire does…it burns and provides light.
We humans are most-burnable
and we have this darkness within that is comfortably entrenched. We fear light, and we sense that we ought to,
because we understand the difference between God and us:
This is the message we heard from Jesus and
now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at
all. 1 John 1:5(NLT)
This is why we venerate
Moses; despite his own darkness he went towards the light. And that
is how to battle the dark!
For You Today
When, in
your times of meditation on God’s Word, you stumble across something quite dark
within yourself, don’t just do battle and run home; run to the light!
NOTES
