This morning I took my new colleague Sarah on a tour of some of the delights of the south of our Circuit. This included the fabulousness of Dallowgill and all the sheep on the road. I shared with her the joy of taking time to notice the wonders around her in the beauty of this part of the world as she travels from place to place.
Tonight I’ve been in Grewelthorpe to give a talk on sacred space using some places I found in last year’s sabbatical and I reflected on the story of Moses.
Moses was called by God to turn aside from his routine, his busyness, his comfort zone to see what God might be up to. For him, it was a burning bush at the side of the road out of which God gave him a commission to lead his people out of slavery and into freedom and a new future. What would have happened if he had ignored that command to turn aside? The whole future of God’s people relied on him seeing and responding to an amazing theophany and revelation.
My conviction is that we have become too busy to have time to turn aside. We fear turning aside because we might get a request from what we see to do something. We are quite content with what we see in life every day. We aren’t wanting new insights.
But, if we would only look, God is there beckoning us to see where he is. And he might not be in a church building we keep going sapping all our energy. The church might be over here, but our burning bush might be over there, and to ignore it might have the same effect had Moses ignored his all those years ago.
What’s happening on the road you travel? Where is God showing you something you cannot help stopping to investigate? What will you do then?
On this twenty second day of Lent, dare you turn aside?
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