{"id":1710,"date":"2013-02-16T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T00:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=1710"},"modified":"2022-04-19T20:07:26","modified_gmt":"2022-04-19T12:07:26","slug":"67-from-boredom-to-holy-ground","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jeffangiegoh.com\/?p=1710","title":{"rendered":"74. Moses on Sinai: From Boredom to Holy Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cCome no closer,\u201d God said. \u201cTake off your sandals, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground<\/span><\/strong>.\u201d [Exodus 3:5<\/span>]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>Moses and the Burning Bush<\/em> by Domenico Feti (1613).<\/span><\/p>\n

When he left the Egyptian palace in a hurry, after killing an officer for ill-treating an Israeli, Moses was an impetuous forty year-old. For the next forty years, life would be the mundane daily routine of watching sheep grazing on the scant grass of the rocky terrain on Mount Horeb [another name for Sinai]. But, today, the voice of Him who created the heavens and the earth called his name, not once, but twice, and not from beyond the clouds, but from the middle of a bush, burning but not burnt up. From today, his life would forever be changed and all of history would see a turning point (Exodus 3:1-4:17).<\/span><\/p>\n

Moses, on hearing the double-call – \u201cMoses, Moses\u201d – instinctively knew that something important was going to happen. With the benefit of Scriptures, we know that something divinely significant was about to occur (Gen. 22:1; 1 Sam. 3:10; Lk. 10:41). The high drama that unfolded lends itself to endless reflection. Let\u2019s take three points and muse a bit.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Today, Jebel Musa on the Sinai Peninsula is identified as Mount Sinai where God appeared to Moses<\/span><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Daily bores and holy ground<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

For most people, our daily life consists of boring routines. So used to the rhythm of our life, we have lost the capacity to see the extraordinary in the ordinary, until we open our eyes and ears to a deeper dimension of reality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moses, a fugitive from Pharaoh\u2019s death warrant, had settled down to a simple nomad\u2019s life out in the wild. His past was nobody\u2019s concern, so he said little about it. He had no contact either with his Jewish family members or his adopted Egyptian family. Now, with a wife and an extended family, he had settled down to a life of domestic tranquility and, at the ripe old age of eighty, had come to expect nothing other than an uneventful life with children, in-laws and sheep. Yes, he had left some unfinished business \u2013 God\u2019s people, to be exact \u2013 behind in Egypt. But his conscience, numbed by the passing years, could leave him alone now.<\/span><\/p>\n

God, however, had other plans. In the slow, mysterious work of a timeless God, nothing in Moses\u2019 life had been wasted. Moses, the one who took a life in Egypt, would now return to that country as the one sent there to liberate lives. God only needed to convince Moses of that! And God began with a simple but profound fact.<\/span><\/p>\n

God told Moses that right where he stood was holy ground<\/em>. One day, while pasturing sheep, doing what he did everyday for the last forty years, Moses saw a bush burning but not burnt up. Fascinated by what he saw, he went over for a closer look. God stopped him short: \u201cMoses, Moses.\u201d And he answered, \u201cHere am I\u201d (Ex. 3:4). If God summoned us today to a mission, would we be able to respond, \u201cHere am I\u201d, or would we be asking for time to attend to other priorities to avoid that call?<\/span><\/p>\n

Once God calls us to do something, however, events tend to move fast. In the story, a very important point for spirituality came up at once as God said, \u201cCome no nearer; take off your sandals, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.\u201d Right at the mundane place of his daily work, Moses encountered God for the first time in his life. That day, God occupied the forefront of his consciousness. An ordinary day, doing the same old thing, became a day pregnant with life-changing experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Scripture has a message for us all: God dwells in our mundane daily routines even more so than in the one-hour-a-week incense of the Sunday liturgy, and if we are not<\/em> open to the \u201cburning bushes\u201d right where<\/em> we stand<\/em>, right where we live the rest of the week, we probably may not encounter God at all in the whole of our life \u2013 a span of seventy years at most, eighty if blessed with good health (Ps. 90)! But if we plunge into life with an eye to meaning and purpose, there God appears, and we hear God calling each of us to an abiding sense of mission.<\/span><\/p>\n

While he was in the corridors of power during his youth, Moses was impatient to set his people free. Down in his ordinary, simple, routine life of a shepherd, he had lost all sense of mission. Through Moses, God opens our eyes to what an inauthentic life may look like.<\/span><\/p>\n

We are to see that real spirituality does not run away from life struggles, but faces every difficult challenge squarely. We are to live all the dimensions of human life \u2013 the ordinary and the extraordinary, the good and the bad, the easy and the tough \u2013 with awareness and strength, with depth and quality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Often we give in to the idea that we have to be exceptionally \u201cblessed\u201d and \u201cgifted\u201d to do God\u2019s work. Like Moses, we suffer from inferiority complexes because we are \u201cold\u201d, financially weak and, outside of the corridors of power, unable to wield influence. Stopping Moses right where he was, God wanted to teach him that his holiness depended on finding holiness where he stood. We are always on our way to some place else to find God when right where we each are standing, is the place where God offers us a holy encounter. God wants us to realize that He has given each person a patch of grass. We are to live out our Christian discipleship as fully as we can, by grazing on our given patch, not on someone else\u2019s. We are also to know that until the last moment of our life, God has a task for us. At whatever age, if we approach life positively, the God of surprises will reveal Himself to us in marvelous graciousness.<\/span><\/p>\n

There is just one condition: we need to take off our sandals. \u201cSandals\u201d here is a rich metaphor for all kinds of stumbling-blocks we need to remove if we are to enter the holy space of God\u2019s presence. \u201cTake off your sandals\u201d is a caveat to approach God with reverence and awe. Asking Moses to take off his \u201csandals\u201d, God also meant to help him to learn and fit into God\u2019s plans, instead of seeking to fit God into his plans. In many of our prayers, we are forever telling God what to do and when to do it. Through Moses at Horeb and Jesus at Gethsemane, we learn to submit to God\u2019s will and ask of God what it is that He wants us to do and then settle down to listen to what He says to us. Until we can set aside our own presumptions, it is not possible for us to do God\u2019s mission; we would only be doing our own thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

When we hear all of that as a resounding call, our peace, like Moses\u2019, may be broken, but it may very well be the beginning of a fascinating new day of authentic, meaningful living. Perhaps then, St Paul\u2019s spirit may begin to make sense, as \u201cChrist now lives in me\u201d (Gal. 2:20).<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Self-motivators and mere instruments<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Through Moses, God begins teaching us afresh.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, God tells us that we tend to rush things. Self-motivation is good, but we may miss the truth that God executes His plans in His time. Enthusiasm propels us, but we are quickly dismayed when things do not go the way we expect. If only we would learn to wait for God! Scripture reminds us that in what we do, we may be running ahead of God\u2019s plans. Might we not learn from Moses that our life thus far, like Moses\u2019 eighty years, was not a waste but a preparation?<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, God in the fullness of time says to us that He<\/em> will send us. It is only when we hear that, can we truly understand that we are not<\/em> the initiators of God\u2019s work, but are merely His agents through whom God works His plans. Then we will know that all the good things that we do are parts of God\u2019s mission, not ours. Then, too, we may learn that God saves, but God saves through us. God wants our faith in discharging what He assigns us to do, and leaving the results to Him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Third, God has a plan for every hour of our lives and He waits to reveal that plan when our hearts are loving and obedient and we are able to hear. Moses was doing his own thing for so long, impetuous in his youth and laid back in old age. For eighty years, he could not hear the voice of God. But God had a plan and He waited. The same is true for us. We do our own thing all the time. We do not let the liberating power of God work in us because it is very difficult in our busy life to listen to Him. We hide behind familiar things that we do everyday, including regular religious rituals. We do not hear that gentle call: \u201cStop. Free yourself, become authentic, and listen to Me<\/em>!\u201d He who spoke in oracles through the ancient prophets is the \u201cI AM\u201d who waits for our seeking hearts to be still enough from our businesses and busyness – our plotting and our activities \u2013 to listen. For only when we quiet down, can we hear God speaking to us. Only then, can we respond, \u201cHere am I.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Our excuses and God\u2019s suffering<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Our response to God is resistance. We need to see how insolent we actually are to God.<\/span><\/p>\n

Notice, again, how Moses in his impetuous youth would attempt the emancipation of his people by the blows of his hand without a second thought of the consequences. And yet, in old age when God seriously sent him to lead an exodus, he recoiled from the very idea of it. This is entirely true of us all. In youth, we knew all about life and its ways and were feverishly impatient. When the real call comes, we are faint-hearted and weak-kneed. Like Moses, we have many excuses and we insult God no end.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the four objections which Moses raised, we see our own excuses. And in dealing with Moses\u2019 human weaknesses, God speaks directly to each of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, we question God\u2019s ability to know what He is doing in sending us! \u201cWho am I that I should go to Pharaoh?\u201d Perhaps that was not so much a voice of\u00a0 humility as reluctance, that turns into a questioning of God\u2019s sense of judgment: \u201cAre You sure You know what You are doing?\u201d Perhaps, too, Moses acted on his feelings of inadequacy. Struggling with indecisions when we feel called to undertake certain missions for God, do we not often object to that call on account of the difficulties that lie ahead? Whenever that happens, God\u2019s reply is confidence-boosting: \u201cI shall be with you<\/em>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Like Moses, our human \u201cI\u201d is a mere agency; the \u201cI AM\u201d of Yahweh will confront Pharaoh and lead the people. Just as God is telling us that He is with us in all those \u201cimpossible\u201d missions in our lives, He is also affirming the need for leaders to be humble.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his youth, Moses was full of himself, trusting in his own strength; now in senior age, when a combination of factors had allowed an inferiority complex to set in, he was to learn about God\u2019s power and influence in his life. Perhaps, too, St Paul, even though in a converse situation of danger of pride bewitching his ministry, had Moses\u2019 story at the back of his mind when he wrote about his own condition:<\/span><\/p>\n