WHY DID THE BUSH NOT BURN UP?

Lent is a time of walking back to God, reconnecting with the divine purpose and allowing ourselves to be transformed by him. So, it is a time we seek the face of God. It is a period of penance and conversion. But how do we connect back to God?

Moses encountering the burning bush can teach us one or two things about reconnecting with God. Moses was a murderer on the run. He fled into the desert and started tending his father-in-law’s flock. On one occasion, he moved up to Mount Sinai. There, he saw a burning bush. It was burning but not consumed. Why did the bush not burn up? It is because the fire has its source from God. God is the single purpose behind the fire.

So many Christians burn up their resources. Why? Because they have created a different purpose different from what God wants them to do. Each and every one of us has been created uniquely. God knows us one by one and with a specific task. The Prophet Jeremiah says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations”(Jer. 1:5).

Moses was already going about his ordinary day-to-day activity – shepherding the flock of his father-in-law. But that was not the plain God had for him. God had a different mission for him. The burning bush encounter helped him to discover that.

So, reconnecting with God is about rediscovering God’s purpose for us. This is what conversion is all about. We all need a burning bush experience, which can come to us in our day-to-day events.

This Lenten season is an opportunity for us to move up to the mountain of prayer in order to listen to the voice of God and find out what he really wants us to be and achieve in this world; what our purpose and mission is.

To find our purpose in life will make us to burn without burning up. God’s fire is not meant to burn his people or his creation. When God’s fire comes into our lives, it is not meant to consume us but to make us glow and shine.