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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 which later became a K-mart which later became something else and so on over the years. When we came into some cash we would often go there to buy something to do. The trip should have only taken maybe half an 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. If there happened to be florescent light tubes, well Jedi warriors armed with exploding light sabers we became. In the store, we would have to wander through the toy section so he could pick up stuff and study it. The sales associates 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, 50 years later, 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. If I’m bored, I can just pull out the phone and start surfing martial arts videos on YouTube or Facebook. In the midst of all this, I have found it important and necessary to take the time 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. Do you ever sit in front of a tree and just take it in. It’s way more impressive than a Where’s Waldo book. No two trees are the same. The details in the bark manifest caricatures in the same way clouds do.
This awareness of things is what they call mindfulness these days. But, you know, I’ve learned that mindfulness isn’t enough especially when life is unfair, unjust. Mindfulness needs to become prayerfulness. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a conversation that undergirds all of reality. In and amongst God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a conversation that shapes everything, a conversation in which we are included and we do have a say. But be warned, this conversation will teach you humility, patience, unconditional love, endurance.
These days I like to take Nellie for walks and at least once a week we get out into the woods where I can let her run. There’s a place where I like to go where I have discovered three stumps situated together not far off the beaten trail. Those stumps are like three chairs or thrones to me – one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Spirit. It takes two kilometers to get there. During that walk I try to just pray the Lord’s Prayer over and over again. That’s a good way to enter into the conversation that’s undergirding everything. When I get to the stumps, I like to sit in their midst, in the midst of these Three whom I can’t see but who are One, and pray what’s on my heart. Since I give them space on the stumps, I don’t feel so much like I’m spouting prayers off into the open air like milkweed and dandelion seeds blowing away. It’s a good way to practice awareness of God’s presence. Quite often I get a sense that God hears, God sees, and God knows and understands what’s going on with me.
This is apparently what happened to Moses when he turned aside to explore a burning bush in the middle of the Sinai Wilderness. 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 because you are unable to provide for their daughter. I suspect that was as low as you could go, back then.
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 meets God in a personal, “I know your name” kind of way. This is the God of his ancestors speaking to him. God tells Moses that he does indeed hear the cries of his people. He does indeed see how they are being made to suffer. He knows, he is quite aware of, he understands what they are going through. So, God tells Moses he is now going to do something about it…and it’s going to involve Moses. Moses is going to have to repurpose his shepherding skills from herding sheep to leading God’s people out of Egypt. This little incident of turning aside to study something fascinating completely turned Moses’ life around.
Encountering God changes things. When we are at our lowest, God will get our attention. Yet, we will have to make the effort to turn aside and enter that conversation that God is having, the conversation that shapes everything, the conversation that, yes, we are included in. Give God time and space in our lives. We need to take the time to turn aside and talk to God. Like the Israelites we need to cry out. Like I said, we are included in the conversation. And while doing so, we need to give God the opportunity to speak to us. It helps in so many ways to read Scripture daily…so many ways. When we take the time to turn aside and talk to God we will discover exactly what Moses discovered – God hears our crying out. God sees what we’re going through. God knows, God understands what we’re going through. God will in his time act and that’s why being part of the conversation requires humility and patience on our part. In the meantime, God will be with us and lead us through the wilderness. Take some time for turning aside to enter the conversation. You just might be found by who you’re looking for. Amen.
