I love looking at pictures like the one here from our church's annual pumpkin patch. And every year, I wonder. Why doesn’t it last? Now, I’m not talking about the pumpkins. Everyone knows that those don’t last. They get stinky pretty quick.
No. I wonder. Why, in so many, does the joy and possibility
they had as children fade away? So
often, folks lose the wonder of those days.
Cynicism and disappointment capture their hearts. They listen to voices inside them that lead
to discouragement and doubt. Lots of
times, they just ignore it happening.
They make their lives busy. They
buy new things to fill the void. They discover ways to avoid the truth they
desperately need to see, a truth that if they saw it would set them free for
joy and possibility again.
But you have a choice. You can discover the wonder again. You can live a life full of more adventure,
fulfillment, and purpose then you could have imagined. And in this famous story of a man, who had
lost his way, God shows you the way. So
listen and hear what God has to say.
Too often, you can lose touch. You can lose touch with what truly
matters. You get trapped in a life that
is so much less than what your life could be; what God created it to be. But how do you break free? How do you become open to receive all the joy
and possibility life offers? In this
story, God shows you. Such a life
begins when you are willing to stop, to look and to listen.
In this story, Moses is trapped in a sort of dead
end. He has lost his standing as a
prince of Egypt. He has lost connection
with his people, the Israelites. He
has settled for a life in exile, helping his father in law tend the sheep. But then Moses’ life changes forever. He
moves from utter obscurity to someone who literally changes human history. He moves from dullness and mediocrity to a
life filled with incredible challenge and possibility. How did it happen?
It happened first because he simply stopped. As Moses went through his day, he saw
something he couldn’t explain, a bush that wouldn’t stop burning. You see.
In the desert, if a brush fire begins, it ends pretty fast. The desert simply doesn’t have the fuel to
feed the fire. So to see a fire that
keeps going and going, a bush that continues to burn and burn, that doesn’t
make any sense. So what does Abraham
do? He stops. Actually, he stops long enough to actually
take a detour, to break his regular routine to check it out.
Most human beings like to think of themselves as
open-minded. They think. If I get some
new information that challenges what I believe, then sure, I’m open to
change. But here’s the problem. When you get new information, information
that contradicts what you think to be true, you usually don’t change your
beliefs. No, you just figure out a way
to fit the new facts to the beliefs we already have. You fit the facts to the frame, the grid you
already have.
Even scientists do this. For centuries, scientists said that new
advances come about because open-minded scientists revised their theories to
fit new facts. But about 40 years ago, a scientist and philosopher named Thomas Kuhn showed that to be completely wrong. Scientists didn’t revise their theories to
fit new facts. No, they just fit the
new facts into what they already thought.
So, how did advances happen? They
happened when no matter what the scientists did, the facts just didn’t fit.
Then, what Kuhn called a paradigm shift
happened. The facts blew up the frame so
completely that nothing but a new frame would work. Even then, the change didn’t come easy. For centuries, human beings said that the
sun revolved around the earth, even when the facts said otherwise. Even when Copernicus finally said what was
obviously there, that the earth revolved around the sun, lots of folks still
claimed he was wrong.
And if it happens in science, you can bet it happens
in your life (Heck, it even happens in baseball). Again and again, I see
people stuck in dead end places because they refuse to change the frame. They believe what they believe. They think what they think, even when those
thoughts and beliefs are not only wrong, but leading them to a life so much
less than what life can be. What changes that? Change happens, if it happens, when life
throws something at you so out of the box, so unexplainable, that it not only
changes your frame. It blows it up.
Several years ago, I got hooked on this totally cool
vampire series called The Passage Trilogy by the writer Justin Cronin. And a
few weeks ago, I picked up the final book in the series at the library. But as
I read, I realized. Something had
changed. The book had all these
allusions to Christianity. But none of
that stuff had been in the earlier books at all. I wondered.
What happened to this guy? So I
googled to find out.
It turned out that up until a few years ago, Cronin
had no room for God in his life. He kind
of believed in God, but it had no impact on his life. Then
something happened, something so out of the box, he can’t explain it to this day. It all started when his wife went
to grab a tissue for their daughter while she was driving her to camp. When she did, the car swerved hitting a
guardrail at top speed, a guardrail on a bridge with a 40 foot drop below. But the guard rail held, and the car bounced
back on the road, where another car rammed into it, spinning it out until as
Cronin describes it:
Like a whale breaching the surface, it lifted off
the roadway, turned belly-up, and crashed down onto its roof. The back half of
the car compacted like an accordion: steel crushing, glass bursting, my
daughter’s belongings—clothes, shoes, books, an expensive violin—exploding onto
the highway. Other cars whizzed past, narrowly missing
them. A final jolt, the car rolled again, and it came to a halt, facing
forward, resting on its wheels.
And in the midst of all that, with the car literally
obliterated around them, Cronin’s wife and daughter did not have a
scratch. It made no sense. As the EMT said, “Nobody walks away from
this.” But they did. And his wife knew that a power beyond
themselves had done it. No other
explanation worked. Suddenly for his
wife, and eventually for Justin, God became very, very real. He and his wife began a search to connect to
this God who had done the unexplainable in their lives. They
had nearly given up, finding no place where they could connect, when as he
writes….In the end, as in the scriptures, it was
a child who led us. Their son, who they had sent to an Episcopal
school, announced on the way home one day that he now believed in Jesus. He
asked. Could we go to my school’s church
some time? And so they did. Now Cronin, his wife and son worship each
week in the pews of St. Stephen’s. And
Cronin’s life has changed forever, in a way more beautiful and wondrous then he
could have dreamed. But it only
happened because he and wife stopped at their burning bush, at what they could
not explain. It only happen whey let
their frames be blown up so they could see the world in a radically different
and truer way.
But people can make a different choice. They can stay stuck in places that don’t
fulfill but disappoint even destroy. Why?
It’s because at least they’re familiar.
As I heard one person put it. “I
don’t like where my life is, but at least here, I know all the names of the
streets.” But your life won’t change if
you keep going as you are. You have to
be willing to stop, to take a detour, to turn to your own burning bush. It may be your child asking you about
Jesus. It may be a setback or a
disappointment. It may be a yearning you
can’t even define. But whatever it is, guaranteed
there’s a bush probably burning in your life right now. Don’t ignore it. Be
willing to stop, to turn aside. Look at
your burning bush, whatever it might be, and let it change you as only it
can.
Now what changes once you’re there? First, you’ll realize that the God you
thought you knew, you don’t really know at all. Moses knew about God before this day. But at that bush, he began to know God. And that is a very different thing. He realized.
God was much bigger, much more mysterious and complex, than he had ever
imagined. I’ve heard folks say to me. You know.
I don’t believe in God. But when
I find out what they mean by God, do you know what I realize? I don’t believe in that God either. In your
journey with God, wherever you are, at the beginning or well along the way, God
will always show you new things, if you’re willing to look and to listen.
And God will not only show you new things about God
but about you. As Moses met God at that
burning bush, he had some pretty set beliefs about himself. If you read the story further. You’ll learn, Moses
considered himself a failure. He had a
stutter. He believed that problem
defined him. So when God called him to
lead his people, he gave every excuse he could. But God hadn’t come just to
blow up Moses’ frame about God. He had
come to blow up Moses’ frame about Moses.
And when God comes into your
life, he will do the same. God will
shatter beliefs that have limited you.
He will heal wounds that have held you back. He will open you to a peace and possibility in
your life you would not have thought possible.
But how does God come into your life? The burning bush
tells you. After all, who is actually
speaking out of this bush? The Bible says
the angel of the Lord is speaking. It’s
as if this angel is God, yet God in a way that can come close that can become
God’s intimate, real presence with you. But who is this angel, an angel who gets
worshipped like God, who speaks as if he is God?
Thousands of years later, the answer came when
someone named Jesus said he spoke for God.
The religious leaders balked.
Jesus didn’t fit their frame. They said, who are you telling us how God
is? We have Abraham as our
ancestor. And what did Jesus say. He said
Before Abraham was, I am. He was saying.
I’m the One who spoke out of the burning bush. I am God come to be with you. And when he laid that reality before them,
that burning bush, they couldn’t believe it.
They encountered God, but because God didn’t fit their frame, they
missed it completely. Because Jesus wasn’t the God they wanted him
to be, they missed the God who actually is.
And this God in Jesus has not only come to you. In Jesus, this God has died for you. For you are so broken, so bound up that God
had to die to heal you, to set you free.
But you are so infinitely loved that God was glad to die so that you
might live. And in the bread and cup of communion, this is who
meets you. Here, in this simple meal, God gives you his life
and presence to make you a burning bush, a wondrous witness of what God can
do. And if that doesn’t make complete
sense to you, it shouldn’t. A God you
could explain would not be God at all.
So what is your burning bush? Is it an experience you can’t explain, a person whose faith you find inexplicable? Is it the question of a child you can’t
answer? Is it the mystery of God's table
prepared for you? Whatever it is, stop, look,
listen. Let God change not only who you think
God is. Let God change who you think you
are.
No comments:
Post a Comment