It’s a story we know well, of course—Moses and that burning bush. The funny thing about it is that it was a day like any other. Moses was somewhere in the middle of the ordinary—getting married, having a child, tending his father-in-law’s sheep—moving in and out of the same old places. On an ordinary day, there it was, a once-in-a-lifetime moment. The moment is significant, to be sure, but not because of the theatrics. The moment is significant because of what the bush signifies—the coming of God.
We’re not Moses, of course, and we’re not likely to see a bush catch fire, but we’ve all had moments in our lives that have signified the coming of God. And, like Moses, when these moments happen, they’re likely to change our lives. Perhaps in quiet ways. Perhaps in ways that alter our whole story. However it happens, when God comes to us, like Moses, we’re wise to lean in and pay attention. We’re wise to pay attention to the coming of God into our lives. We’re wise to pay attention to our lives. We’re wise to pay attention. On that fateful day that God comes to Moses, God says this—I have seen the pain of those that I love.
When has God entered into your life and said, “I have seen your pain?”
Much of the scene in Exodus 3 is framed around “seeing” or “sight.” In Exodus 3:2, the angel of the LORD “appears” to Moses; in that same verse, Moses “sees” the bush on fire. In Exodus 3:3, Moses says he will turn aside and he will “see” this great “sight,” and in verse 4, the LORD “sees” that Moses has turned aside “to see.” All this seeing—Moses’ seeing and Yahweh’s seeing—is purposeful. And it is for this purpose—for the LORD to reveal, in Exodus 3:7, that he has “surely seen,” an emphatic construction in the Hebrew, the oppression of “my people.” The LORD says that “I have heard” “their cry,” which has come up, literally in the Hebrew, “before my face.”
What exactly is the cry of the people that the LORD has seen and heard? When the LORD tells Moses he’s heard their cry, he puts it like this—I have heard their cry “because of their taskmasters” (Exod.3:7). In biblical Hebrew, a taskmaster connotes something that “presses down” or “beats down” or “wounds.” The pain of the Israelites isn’t hidden but is right there on the page, in the plaintive cries of God’s people, forever captured by the pen of the Hebrew writer.
Let’s step aside from stories about burning bushes and literal enslavement and think about our own story.
What are the taskmasters in your life? A taskmaster can be anything or anyone that keeps us from experiencing the freedom, the wholeness, the peace, and the joy that God offers to us.
What are the things that, like a taskmaster, press you down, beat you down, wound you?
A taskmaster doesn’t just do things—a taskmaster says things, too, and the things he says are loud and powerful:
Your pain defines you.
Your pain is communicable—best to keep other people at a distance.
Your brokenness means you’re not normal.
You’re too wounded for God to use you.
God’s love for you is conditional.
You’ll be in this place forever.
The good things you’ve done don’t matter.
Trying to get to a better place is too hard; the evil that you know is better than the uncertainty of something else. The way forward is too hard. Stay where you are.
No one else is struggling the way that you are. Keep your pain a secret. Don’t be vulnerable.
Taskmasters’ faces and voices may differ—but what they do is the same—they press down, they hurt, they leave a scar. Their voices may drown out the voice of God, and that may be the hardest part of the experience.
Where God is in the midst of all of this?
Consider this—God’s revelation to Moses at the burning bush is for the purpose of leading his people out of the place of pain, and God makes three promises:
I see your pain, and I want to take you to a better place.
On the way to that better place, you will have to face your pain. That place is a hard place, called wilderness.
My presence, power, and provision will be with you every step of the way.
The God of Exodus 3 is a God who sees, who hears, and who responds. It is this same God who sees, who hears, and who responds to the pain in our lives.