Turn aside

"I will turn aside and see this great sight..."

In Exodus 3 there is a very popular story that we learn in Sunday about Moses and the burning bush. And if you grew up in church like me you can probably remember being told about how Moses was tending his sheep in the wilderness and saw a bush on fire and was amazed. How God talked to him out of the bush and that is was sent Moses back into Egypt to set the Hebrew people free from slavery.

And we all remember this story as one that is so amazing because this bush was on fire.

Because where we live, that was the part of the story that stuck with us. An ON FIRE bush talked to Moses.

But as an adult as we read that story there is something else entirely that we missed in Sunday school. Because the story isn’t even a little bit about the bush.

For Moses the sight of a bush on fire was a pretty normal thing. We live in places that are green and forested, sunny and beach-y, mountain filled, or covered with farmland. But a few of us live in the desert. And for those who do, the reality of the sun being hot enough to light something on fire probably makes way more sense. Because for Moses in a dry wilderness in the midst of a desert, the bush was not significant. In fact, the only part of the bush that is significant is that God was in it so “it was not consumed.”

And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” Exodus 3:3

We don’t actually know how long the bush was on fire. It could have been on fire for minutes or hours or days. But it was on fire long enough for Moses to notice that a normal occurrence was not acting normally. It was on fire long enough that Moses must have passed by it at least twice with some time in between for him to realize that the bush was not being consumed. For many of us noticing something like that would take several passes, walking by the same sight over and over before we realized that something was happening out of the ordinary.

But then Moses did something.

He could have just thought to himself “How strange! The bush isn’t being consumed by the fire. Weird! Well I need to get back to dinner!” And walked away. There was nothing that made him, forced him, called to him, encouraged him, or even suggested to him, that anything else needed to happen. What did it matter that a bush was on fire and not burning away? Why do anything about it? It’s not like it was going to start a wildfire or caused him any threat. It was just there burning. And it didn’t have anything to do with him.

But…he didn’t walk away.

He turned aside.

He moved off his normal path.

He deviated from what was in front of him.

He stepped away from everything that he was doing - that I am confident was vital, necessary, and essential to his life.

He turned aside.

So then - and only then - AFTER Moses decided to turn aside did God call to him.

When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”

And from there the rest of the story of Moses unfolds, leading to the freeing of an entire people group, the splitting of the Red Sea, the 10 plagues, wandering through the dessert. His actions led to the rise of Israel as a nation, the rise of King Saul, then King David, and the generational line that led to Jesus Christ Himself.

All because in the middle of the wilderness, Moses saw something different about an every day occurrence and turned aside.

Moses didn’t know that deviating from his normal path would lead to anything more than a strange bush. He didn’t know that anything of significance would happen. It doesn’t even suggest that he knew it was God.

So how often do you, in your normal life, walk by God waiting for you in a seemingly common occurrence? How many times have you walked by the same thing before realizing that God was in it? How many times has God watched you walk by waiting to see when you would finally notice that something different was happening?

When was the last time you turned aside?

Our lives are full. So was his. You have a family? So did he. You have a job or a business? So did he. Your life is fully established and needs no altering? So was his. You have excuses? So did he.

But he still turned aside.

Turning aside can look like a lot of things. Sometimes it literally means taking a different path in your life. But sometimes it means noticing how God is moving in your life. It means seeing how he is impacting the ordinary. It means seeing how God wants to move in the normal and common occurrences to create something extraordinary.

We are not all Moses. And your willingness to turn aside most likely won’t shape the course of history and a nation…

but, what if, just maybe, in your humble life, with your family, and your business, God is waiting for you to turn aside? What if God is waiting on you to step away for just a moment so he can do the extraordinary through you?

What if you just need to turn aside?