Full of Glory

“When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’”  Exodus 3:5

 

For four decades, life for Moses seemed much the same—sheep, sheep, and more sheep, but then one day he went to the far side and found the Lord.  “Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God”(Ex 3:1). Moses wasn’t looking for the divine, but when the sight of a burning bush caught his eye, God caught his ear.  “When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’”(Ex 3:5).

“I’m right here,” Moses replied, but God didn’t need to know where Moses was—He wanted Moses to know who He was and what He was about to do.  “I am the God of your fathers.  I have seen the misery of my people. I have heard their cries.  I am concerned, and I have come to down to rescue them”(Ex 3:6-9). 

Those few short statements pretty much sum up the astounding theology and glorious truth of the gospel.  God is “I AM” – the One who WAS, who IS, and who WILL BE everything and anything He desires to be.  Because He is, we are, and because He is faithful, we can have faith. He is the God who made a covenant with Abraham, with Moses, and with us, and He is the God who always keeps His promises. 

This never-failing, all-powerful God also cares.  He sees our misery even though we often try to mask our pain.  He hears our cries even when others never notice our tears.  And He is concerned—not just with a fleeting feeling of compassion but with the compelling commitment of incarnation. The infant’s cry from Bethlehem’s stable announced His arrival in our midst to make us His own, for “He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves”(Col 1:13). 

We’ve all been to the far side of the wilderness, but we’ve never been out of reach of the God who comes to our rescue.

Never hesitate to look closer at a burning bush.

You might just find it’s full of glory.