None of our lives goes in a straight line. None of us is born with a map that lays out all the movements from beginning to end, and we cannot know what lies ahead. Our lives are always something of a mystery to us. We are born into particular families, at particular times, in particular cultures, with particular values and norms.
As we grow we do come to know ourselves. We develop a sense of our own identity and potential. We dream about what we might become. But the mystery always remains because there is so much that happens in our lives—good things and hard things—over which we have no control. We are always responding, consciously or unconsciously, to our circumstances. We make choices that turn our lives in a certain direction. And over our lifetimes, we keep responding to what is past and what is present, sometimes in ways that draw is in and sometime in ways that open us to new possibilities.
Moses’ life does not go in a straight line. From the day he is born, Pharoah wants him dead. His mother chooses to put him in a basket and float him out into the Nile. Pharoah’s daughter choose to lift him out of the water to be her own son. Neither woman knows what will come of their choices. Neither knows what will become of this baby. An Isrealite by birth and an Egyptian by adoption, exempt from the enslavement of his people, Moses grows up seeing their suffering. There is in him a life force, a deep love, and a passion for justice. He cannot bear to see the abuses his people endure and in a fit of rage murders an Egyptian slave masters and buries him beneath the sand.
Moses is found out. Pharoah, his adoptive grandfather wants him dead. So Moses runs for his life. He leaves everything behind. Marries into the tribe of the Midianites and spends his days as a shepherd. Shepherds have a lot of time to think. And I wonder what Moses thought about as he sat out in that wilderness while the sheep grazed. I wonder if he thought about going home again? I wonder if he still ached for the suffering of his kinsfolk? I wonder if he beat himself up for not hanging in there, for not at least trying to end the enslavement of his people? I wonder how he thought about himself, and the choice he made to save his life even though it meant losing his people? I wonder if he played with the “what ifs?” What if I had done this instead of that? Where would I be? Who would I be? And I wonder if he sometimes still imagined the possibility that he could free his people for life.
None of our lives goes in a straight line. Things happen. We choose, consciously or unconsciously. Doors open. Doors close. Certain possibilities slip through our fingers, sometimes permanently, and sometimes just for a season. But our lives are open-ended. New possibilities are always possible. And our ability to embrace these possibilities depends on our capacity to simply stay open to the mysterious unfolding of our own lives and to be patient in the waiting. Despite our hurts and our disappointments with others and ourselves, despite our feelings of disappointment with God or our doubts about God, it is in staying open, engaged, and curious about the mystery of our lives that new possibilities enter our field of vision.
Whatever Moses’ may have been ruminating on that day in the wilderness, despite his pain, and loss, and disappointment, there is something in him that is still open to mystery, something in him that yearns and burns for possibilities beyond what seems possible. Moses sees that bush burning and gets curious. He turns. He closes the distance between himself and this strange thing that he sees. And here is the interesting turn in this story. Because Moses responds in this way, because he goes toward this mysterious fire, because he risks either getting burned, or finding out that what he sees is just a figment of his own imagination–God speaks to him. When God sees what Moses does, then God engages him directly. God doesn’t start yelling at him from a thousand hundred yards off. God waits to see what Moses will do, then does what God does.
Now, I bet you’re thinking. Who wouldn’t stop? Who wouldn’t zoom in? I wonder too. But the real wonder here is that God waits for Moses to see and respond, then responds to him. God is responsive. There is a mutual exchange going on here. There is a dance. Human beings are not puppets on God’s strings. Moses could have walked on by exactly on purpose, or because he was so wrapped up in his own stuff that he couldn’t see and be drawn to transcend the limits of his life. Moses is free. Moses can choose. God prompts with this burning bush, but Moses must respond. God waits to see what he will do. God responds to human responses.
And this means that God’s life doesn’t go in a straight line any more than our lives do. God is working toward an end. God is re-creating the world as a place in which all of the universe’s harmonies are restored, brokenness is healed, evil is overcome, and every person finally comes into their full beauty and glory and goodness. But because God chooses to re-create the world in, with, and through human beings who may or may not choose to co-operate and co-labor with God, God’s life does not go in a straight line. God zigs and zags. God leads and God follows in this dance with us. If God wanted to get from point A to point B in a hurry, then God would have made us all like puppets on a string, or God would have simply cut us out of the process of re-creating the world altogether.
Curious Moses, this man whose life has zigged and zagged, this murderer, this tired, dusty shepherd with a price on his head, part Israelite, part Egyptian, part Midian, closes the distance between himself and this bush that burns in the wilderness. And seeing what he does God speaks, “Moses, we have something in common,” says God. “We both see, we both ache for the suffering of the Israelites, we both we yearn for their freedom. The yearning in you is my own yearning. So come, Moses, I will send you to bring my people out of Egypt.” Whatever possibilities Moses’ may have imagined for himself, whatever secret hopes he may have held for his people, in this moment of encounter, all Moses can see are his limits. “Who am I to be called into this possibility? I cannot speak. I cannot go back. I’m not your guy.”
Moses’ first question to God is, “Who am I?” His second question is, “Who are you? What is your name?” “I am who I am,” says God. God seems cagey, both revealing and withholding at the same time. Moses wants more. He wants to know more about this One who calls him. He wants some kind of certainty about what will happen before he responds. Moses wants to wring the mystery and the unknowing out of the possibility that God opens before him. But this is always the one thing that is not possible. We cannot dissolve the mystery, we cannot escape the unknowing that is our own lives and that is the life of God.
If we want to know who God is, if we want to know who we are, if we want to transcend our felt limits, if we want to become who God made us to be, then we have to go into the mystery. We have to turn toward the prompting, the burning bush, the still small voice, we have to answer the yearning in our own souls that is the yearning of God in us and for us. Biblical faith is always a story of setting off on a journey, of seeking, of going without knowing exactly where you are going or what happens next. It is always a journey of trusting this God who says: “I am who I am, and who I am is the one who goes with you. I am the one who makes impossible things possible. I am the one who zigs and zags with you every day and all the way to the end. Until we arrive together at that place where all of the universe’s harmonies are restored, brokenness is healed, evil is overcome, and every person finally comes into their full beauty and glory and goodness. I am the One who in love risks my own life for you, the one who lives in you, and calls you to go where ever my love takes you.