One moment during my trip to the Holy Land.
St. Catharines Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai.
Our guide shows us Moses’ burning bush – the actual bush, transplanted but grown from the same roots for thousands of years. I approach it with a modern, rational skepticism.
“This can’t be the actual bush,” I think to myself. I scoff silently as other pilgrims reach prayerfully to touch the branches, as if this bush is some sort of holy relic. “Ridiculous!” my definite inner voice repeats.
The burning bush at St. Catharine's Monastery.
I begin to turn away and something stops me in my tracks. “I’m here – I may as well touch it.” So, feeling fairly foolish, I reach up to casually brush the tip of my fingers on a branch over my head.
Ouch! A large thorn pricks me, and as I draw my hand away a large, dark red drop of blood forms on my finger. I stop in my tracks and chuckle as I stare at the perfectly round drop.
“OK God,” I think, “I get it!’ And I wonder what else he/she will do to get my attention.
Moses’ encounter with the burning bush was much more dramatic:
Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Exodus 3:1-4.
OK God, here I am, what do you want from me?
Seeker
Seeker of Wisdom 