So Now Go, I Am Sending You

​This morning, I was reading about this guy Moses. One day Moses was being an ordinary guy, a shepherd, tending his father-in-law's flock. (That sure had to keep things a little happier at home 😊). But then Moses sees a bush on fire. Only, the bush wasn't disintegrating. The flames kept roaring, but the bush remained unchanged.

The happy family was suddenly the furthest thing from Moses' mind.

Moses gets up the nerve to move a little closer to the bush to try to unravel this mystery. But things only get more mysterious when the burning bush calls out his name.

Moses! Moses!

And Moses says, "I'm right here."

Somewhere, there's a definition of crazy that says crazy isn't when you hear a burning bush talk to you, it's when you start talking back to it.

The bible tells us this burning bush was God. And God had come to tell Moses about something weighing on his heart. Some people God dearly loved, the Israelites, were trapped in slavery in Egypt.

“The Israelite cry for help has come to me, and I’ve seen for myself how cruelly they’re being treated by the Egyptians," God told Moses.

Through that burning bush, God told Moses, "So now, go. I am sending you."

A couple of years ago, I had a chance to sit down with Buddy Teaster, the CEO of Soles4Souls. We had a long coversation about the work Souls4Souls was doing in places like Haiti and Honduras. I could feel Buddy's heart breaking for those people as he told me about the things he'd seen people enduring in these places, and all that his organization was trying to do to help them.

Less than a year later, I found myself standing in a very unlikely place: Honduras.

As I stood in the midst of the poorest people I'd ever stood among, as I saw and heard and felt suffering in a way I never had before, I realized there weren't any flames shooting out of Buddy Teaster that day I talked to him. But be not mistaken, Buddy Teaster was a burning bush.

More than ever, since that Honduras experience, I walk around looking for burning bushes. Because if Honduras taught me nothing else, it taught me my life hadn't been empty of burning bush experiences, I'd simply been too busy tending my own flocks in life to notice them.

I'd walked by a lot of shooting flames pretending I didn't see them.

Honduras taught me there are a lot of people in this world, and in your neighborhood and in your office - who just can't afford to have us pretend we don't see bushes burning all over the place. There are people who are suffering and experiencing cruelty who can't afford to have us not here God say, "So now, go. I am sending you."

I have this sort of fear, that one day I'll meet God. And behind him will be this endless row of burning bushes. It goes on forever like I-95 or something.

And I'll ask God, what are all those burning bushes. And he'll turn his head behind him, and stare at those endless fires, and then look back at me, tears in his eyes. He'll tell me - those are all the bushes, full of flames, that you walked by without noticing them. Those are all the times I tried to tell you about my broken heart - about the people I see treated cruelly, and you didn't have time to hear me.

That's why one of my prayers this day - and every day since Honduras - is God let me see the burning bushes you want me to see. Let me hear you say go to the places you want me to go. Let me know the people in this world you want to rescue through me.

Because today I know it's easy to read a story in Exodus about a burning bush and think, no way.... But today, I also know - I've sat with a burning bush. I've heard it say go, and I went.

And so when I read that story of Moses this morning, I assure at no point did I think, no way.....