By Abby VanderBrug
I wonder, have you ever just wanted an obvious sign from God, like the burning bush Moses got? I have.
Many times in my life when I have been making a tough decision-either between two colleges that I both desperately wanted to go to, and later when I was more than halfway through college and still had yet to claim a major, or when I was wondering if I should stay in a relationship or break up with someone. What should I do? What is the best way to go?
If God would just give me a sign, this would be easier.
A burning bush would work just fine – but I would also settle for a billboard with the “right” answer painted in bold, a vivid dream, or an anonymous email. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it worked like this? If God wasn’t so mysterious, but more like a magic 8-ball that we could ask “am I marrying the right person?” and get a clear answer to.
In my own prayer life I have tried to demand these types of answers less. I try to pay attention when my prayers frequently request, “just tell me what to do.” Mostly, I try to avoid this because it’s likely that in my heart, if I’ve been paying attention enough, I know what it is I should do, or the way I should go, I just don’t want to do it. So instead of begging for clarity, what I really need is some courage and reaffirmation that God is with me
And anyways, we should be careful what we wish for, because if Moses’ experience with the burning bush tells us anything, it’s that oftentimes when God tells us to do something, it is not necessarily what we want to do. It’s not always safe, comfortable, or easy.
Perhaps a more helpful way to hear the story is with more emphasis on a God that says no matter what – no matter plagues and famine, no matter mean Pharaohs and Red Seas, no matter stuttering tongues and incredibly complex family relationships, I am God and I will be with you.
The author Barbara Brown Taylor writes in one of her sermons about “Thin Places” a term that she found in a guidebook on a trip to Ireland. She talks about how a ‘thin place’ is not the same as the common phrase “the space between this world and the next” because that makes it sound like one must leave this world to enter the next one, like one must end before another can begin. Rather, she insists that a Thin Place is where one is made more aware of the very thin veil between this reality and the deeper reality.
Thin places don’t have to be burning bushes, but they can be, it certainly was for Moses. It’s something that when you feel it, you know, however fleeting it may be. Think of Moses taking off his sandals when he encounters the burning bush because it was Holy Ground. Taylor says “ I know I’m in a thin place when it feels like the floors just dropped three levels beneath my feet and I’m set down in a place much deeper than before.
They can be hospital rooms, they can be the way the light shines through your window to your breakfast table in the morning, a lady bug that lands and decides to stay awhile. A glimpse of the eternal.
I don’t know where the thin places are that you have been and I can’t tell you what makes them appear and then disappear for us in the blink of an eye. But I can tell you that we know when we’re in one, that at times we can sense the Holy One dwelling among us in a very real way. The divine stops by for a visit, the veil lifted, if only for a moment, to say to us, “I will be with you.”
