Monday Reflection – December 06, 2021

Monday Reflection – December 06, 2021
Meeting with God

God called to Moses, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:5

God sometimes meet us in the obvious and exhilarating experiences of life. Isaiah can testify to this, for it was while in the temple, in the presence of the holy angels singing of God’s holiness, that God meets him. Yet, God sometimes meet us in the ordinary events of our lives, but calls us into His extraordinary plan for our lives. God meets Moses in something as mundane as a bush, but quickly reveals to him that God Himself is not mundane. God is holy, and so is His presence.

Dennis Olson notes that, after being chased out of Egypt and away from his Hebrew people, Moses is out shepherding sheep for his Midianite father-in-law. Out in the wilderness, Moses stumbles upon “the mountain of God” known as Mount Horeb. In the ancient world, mountaintops were the traditional dwelling places for the divine. There, at the mountain, Moses encounters an unquenchable burning bush. Fire is a common biblical symbol of God’s presence. The fiery bush is an icon of the divine, a window into God’s presence that both reveals and hides. In part, the ever-burning shrub out in the wilderness signals God’s merciful accommodation. God comes down from the mountain of God to meet Moses in the bush. At the same time, the inextinguishable flame is a sign of God’s awesome and powerful holiness, a fiery holiness that is both dangerous and attractive, frightening and comforting, untamed but reassuring.

God instructs Moses to remove the sandals from his feet. The gesture is an ancient practice when entering a holy place of8 divine presence. It is a gesture that honors the holiness of this ground, this mountain and this God. However, removing his sandals has a second significance in light of Moses’ status as an alien residing in a foreign land. The Hebrews had rejected Moses as one of their own, and the Egyptian Pharaoh sought to kill him. The Midianites see Moses as a foreigner. Taking off one’s sandals is a gesture in many traditional cultures that is associated with entering a home. Thus, here at the foot of the mountain of God, Moses the “alien,” has at last found a true “home.” Moses finds his true home not with humans but with God, the God of his ancestors.

God’s warning to Moses to not come closer served to indicate to him that he was standing on holy ground. Later, God’s people could not come near God’s presence on the mountain; likewise, only priests could enter the sanctuary, and almost no one could enter the holiest place in the tabernacle. Yet, we should remind ourselves that at Christ’s crucifixion the curtain of the temple was torn from top to bottom, signaling that we have free, equal and unlimited access to the presence of God. We remind ourselves too that God desires to make His home among us.

God is holy and must be approached with reverence. God is holy, and must be approached with our best signs of respect. God meets with us to reveal some measure of Himself, and His divine plan and purposes for our lives. God meets with us to burn away the dross that threaten to destroy us and prevent His perfect will for our lives to be fulfilled. God meets with us so we can find our true home with Him. God’s meets with us through His Son Jesus Christ, whose first Advent we reflect on in this Season. Let’s favorably receive God’s invitation and meet with Him.  

Jermaine Gibson