When I was
young I had a best friend. His name was
Ronnie. We met the summer before we
started first grade and were best friends up until we graduated high school and
life took us our separate ways. As in
any friendship there is a certain amount of give and take that must occur for
two people to tolerate one another. Although
Ronnie and I were closer than brothers, there was one thing about him that I
just had to tolerate. He had this habit
of whenever he saw something that fascinated him he would turn aside and study
it.
This gift of
his interfered with just about everything we did together. For example, we lived not far from a Rose’s
department store and often we would go there to buy something. The trip should have only taken maybe a half
hour to walk through the field, cross the railroad tracks, through the parking
lot to the store, go make the purchase and come back. Ronnie’s gift of turning aside would often make
this little trip take a couple of hours.
There was no
limitation to the things that fascinated him.
Walking through the field he would have to study bugs. If there happened to be a dead animal on the
way, look out because he was really fascinated with skeletons. We would have to walk up and down the railroad
tracks to see what was there. Then in
the parking lot, we would have to go to the dumpster to see what Rose’s had
thrown away. In the store, we would have
to wander through the toy section so he could pick up stuff and study it. The sales clerks would often follow us around
thinking we were shoplifters. Then on
the way home he’d have to do it all over again.
I never understood this simple fascination he had with the oddest things
and why he had to turn aside and study them, I just learned to live with it.
Now, as I have
grown older, I have changed my mind about Ronnie’s giftedness. Life is so busy, busy enough that even a walk
to the store is most times inconvenient and out of the question. I have found
it important and necessary to turn aside and take notice of little things, like
watching squirrels and birds, or listening to the wind blow and then there’s my
all time favorite thing to do and that is stare at the trees. No two trees are the same. The details in the bark manifest caricatures
in the same way clouds do. We have to
approach life with a certain sense of fascination otherwise it becomes boring
and we get grumpy. Like Ronnie, we have
to turn aside from time to time from our busyness or even from our lack of
busyness to discover how miraculous life really is and to enjoy it. Often it is when we turn aside that we gain a
certain sense of insight into our lives, a certain sense of renewal, or a new
sense of direction.
This is
apparently what happened to Moses when he became fascinated with a burning bush
in the middle of the Sinai. There was Moses out a little further in the desert
wilderness of Sinai than he needed to be shepherding his father-in-law’s
sheep. One can only conjecture that
Moses may not have been too proud of himself at the time. He, the adopted grandson of Pharaoh was forced
to flee his home, left behind everything, simply because he had heard the cry
of one of his own enslaved Hebrew people and as a result murdered an Egyptian
taskmaster. He fled out into the desert
to the home of Jethro, the Midianite priest and married one of his
daughters. He had nothing of his own to
offer his wife and instead his father-in-law had to take him in and support
him. There’s being an adult and having
to live with your parents, then there’s having to live with your in-laws. That’s as low as you go.
Moses went
from being a prince in the house of Pharaoh to being a shepherd in his
father-in-law’s house. During this “low
point” in his life out in the desert wilderness he see’s a burning bush. He
turns aside to study it. He met God in a
personal, “I know your name” kind of way.
In this encounter God gave him a new purpose in life, that of going back
to the house of Pharaoh to speak for God, to “tell ole Pharaoh, “Let my people
go’”. Then, Moses would have to retask
his shepherding skills in a new and bigger way; shepherding God’s people back
to the mountain of God to worship. This
little incident of turning aside to study something fascinating completely
turned Moses’ life around.
Burning
bushes, sensing holy ground, meeting God personally, discovering a calling –
these are not things we encounter every day.
Please don’t misinterpret the way I started this sermon by thinking that
staring at trees and watching squirrels are surefire ways to mystically connect
with God. My friend Ronnie grew up to be
very artistically gifted. Seeing beauty
in details is the way he’s wired. When
we take the time to turn aside like he does it awakens us to beauty and that
has its positive effects on us, but that’s not necessarily “the burning bush”
though for some it can be.
Nevertheless,
where do we find our burning bushes? I
would like to suggest taking the time to turn aside and take notice of the people
around us. A man who was man “Canadian
father” used to say “There’s nothing stranger than people.” He was right in that. We humans with all our complexities are quite
the wonder to behold and ponder. The
Psalmist says we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” We are made in the image of God, which means
we are relational beings as the Father, Son, and Holy Sprit are relational
being. When we take the time to turn
aside and get to know people, to set ourselves aside and actually listen and
pay attention to other people – well, I think this is where we find our
“Burning Bush” and come to know God more personally and become grasped with a
greater sense of what God wants to do through us.
This is what
you could call seeing with “people eyes”.
Through Canadian Ministries Timothy and I and the Coop leadership have
access to a ministry coach, Stan Ott of The Vital Churches Institute. Stan likes to talk about “people eyes”, about
training ourselves to see past the exteriors of people, past our judgments
about people, and taking the time to actually get to know people. We are in peoples’ lives and people are in
our lives because God has put them there.
The love of God, which he has poured into us in Christ – the Holy Spirit
– gives us the compassion to be fascinated enough with other people to turn
aside and take notice of them.
The
relationships we have and the ones we make are holy ground. God is there.
Using our people eyes, turning aside and taking notice of other people
in all their strangeness, talking to them, befriending them, showing kindness
and patience, showing hospitality, showing compassion, this is the way God
reveals himself and acts in this world through us and for us. Use your “people eyes” and see. Amen.
