Day Nine

Exodus 3:4-12

Here is a moment in Moses’ life when the Lord came near and shared his heart. Doubtlessly, His presence in the form of an uncharred shrub was surprising to Moses, but the heart of the Lord is for relationship with His people who are suffering. 

Our lives are diamond studded with moments like these—times and spaces where the air is razor thin, and the things of earth grow strangely dim, and heaven feels this close. 

Call it an invitation, it’s often like a gravity that tugs at the things that make us human, toward the divine. And we’ve all felt it. I’ve felt it, often in moments of extreme joy and also sadness, often when we are taken by surprise. 

When my boys were born, I remember feeling shocked and in love in an instant, and in the next, juxtaposed against feelings of sadness that from that moment on, they would eventually grow out of their childhoods. I felt caught in the middle, suspended between massive turns of life I was powerless to do anything about but to be present for. 

And I think that suspension feeling is a part of the way the Lord draws near. Certainly His presence is our good, and His heart is our rescue. 

Advent reminds us about something of the mission of God—that is, the motivation of the divine to save and be with humanity. But perhaps it also reminds us of something about the setting of the divine—that is where we may meet with Him. May we learn to practice presence and listening for those moments where the air feels thin and the Lord calls to us.