God's Call

     

 "And he led the flock to the backside of the desert - and came to the mountain of God."  (Exodus 3:1)

 Hey Gang:  Do you have a day that came unannounced and you can say it changed your life, or at least made a major change in the direction you were going?  I had three such days: one, the day I attended a football game and met the ‘pearl of great price my life’. It was, far and above, the first such day!

But there were two others that made profound changed in my life: the day Uncle Sugar sent me a letter saying, "Your friends and neighbors have chosen you to give four years of your life for your country”.  And the third was the day I was out cutting my grass and a total stranger walked up to me and said,  "I hear you are going to sell your house, and I am interested,”  that set me on the path God had laid out for my life even before time began - the development of the Village.

 I mentioned, in a recent morning thought that Jeremiah was one tough dude and deserved placement in God's Hall of Perseverance and Toughness.  But he was not alone, Moses was also a charter member of the ‘toughness school’.

 For Moses it was just another day. Time to move the grass nibblers through the wadi's of the Sinai to greener pastures, seeking enough grass to keep his flock alive.  Over beyond the waters of the Gulf of Aqaba was the land of Esau.  You remember Esau, he was the man who never recovered from the loss of his birthright stolen by Jacob.  Many Bible guru's trace this incident in Esau's life, and Abraham  sending Hagar and Ishmael packing, as the reason many of the Arab peoples are so filled with anger and hatred today.

 But this day was to be day different than any other.  He noticed a sight that caught his attention. A sight, that I sense, might get anyone’s attention - a bush that was burning but yet did not burn up!  Now that was a weird phenomenon.  Not that a bush was burning, that was a common event in the Sinai, but the fact that fire did not consume the bush- was indeed an attention gaining  event. 

 In his earlier years in the court of Pharaoh, a burning bush would not have caught his eye, but forty years in the wilderness had changed his focus.  It took years of hardship to slow Moses down from the maddening pace of Pharaoh's court, an attribute that many have lost in our high tech world.

 Soooo, Moses said, "I will go over and take a peek at this strange sight", a decision that would change his life forever!  When was the last time you got alone in your private world and looked at the God given beauty that is ours for the taking?  I often think of the day I was hiking in the Tetons and came across an area where someone had disgraced God's wondrous beauty by dumping a load of garbage.  It was a wonderful example of Romans 8:28, that God can take even the worst of man’s selfishness and neglect and turn it for His, and our good  As I approached the garbage area, I noticed a purple tint that turned out to be tiny flowers that covered the garbage. Tune in next time for the rest of the story.

Blessings,

Gramps