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God comes to the Israelites in the midst of their pain and tells them that he wants to bring them to a better place. Those of us who know the story, however, know that they have to go through a hard place—wilderness—to get to the better place. Wilderness is a kind of “space between”—a space between enslavement and freedom. Wilderness is the place where we lead ourselves, where life lead us, or where God leads us—to deal with our pain.
The God of Exodus 3 is a God who sees, who hears, and who responds. This same God sees, hears, and responds to the pain in our lives. Our most painful secrets and most secret scars are not a secret to God. The most painful surprise of our lives is not a surprise to God. God saw it coming, all along. And God comes, as Carlo Carretto says, like the sun in the morning—when it is time. He comes to us and he tells us that he wants to take us to a better place.
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.
