Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Dear Friends:

(This is Part 2 of a meditation on Moses’ experience with the burning bush.)

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Ex. 3:1-6).

Life in the desert is a matter of the “here” and the “now.” One’s past is of no account where there is no one to take note. The scarcity of resources leaves no ability to hoard for the future.

I live 150 miles from Death Valley where tourists experience one of the harshest deserts on earth in four-star luxury lodgings. I would not depend upon the concierge from the Furnace Creek Inn to lead me safely through that desert on foot. I would want a guide who learned to see the desert through 40 years of living there. If I am going to enter a spiritual desert, I want a guide who has found God in such a place.

After his exile from Egypt, Moses spent his entire life in the desert other than one trek back to Egypt to pick up his people. Those were 40 years of heat and flies, stubborn sheep wind-blown grit in and on everything, and no place else to go.

Taking things into his own hands brought Moses to this. Now everything was taken from him and he began to experience life as a gift. Moses became a husband and father. Shepherding the flock of his father-in-law taught him stewardship (Ex 2:21-22, 3:1). He began to understand what God could do in empty spaces for it was there that Moses learned to love and to pray, two essentials of spiritual leadership. When the silence of the desert became the stillness in his heart, Moses was ready to turn aside from the beaten path, to see God in a new place and new way, hear God’s word spoken to him and obey it. After 80 years of waiting, Moses followed God and was, therefore, prepared to lead God’s people into the desert where they too would reconnect to the God of their ancestors and learn his ways for themselves.

God fed the children of Israel in the wastelands when they had nothing to eat. He brought water out of rock when they were thirsty. He spread a cloud over them for shade and gave them fire to light their way by night. There is no place like a desert to learn the possibilities of the God who loves you. Those possibilities will be realized in elemental and ordinary things like rocks, shrubs, family (Ex 2:21-22), and groaning prayers for relief (Ex 3:23-24). The realization of grace comes when one has nothing more with which to bargain and nothing else to depend upon except God. The Lord “will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer” (Ps 102:17).

Not everyone is willing to submit to the transformation of the desert.  We are stubborn children wanting to do things for ourselves or not do them at all. Only those who are willing to turn aside from their business to seek God gain the vision of his glory (Ex 3:3-4).  Only those who come to consider their calling a gift, not an entitlement, ask God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Ex 3:11) With those words of perspective, Moses revealed his vision of grace. Once he had observed wrongdoing and took vengeance into his own hands with arrogance. Now he claimed no privilege or power for himself.

I tire of those arguments in Bible studies and discussion groups about whether the bush really burned with God and whether God actually talked to Moses or whether Moses was hallucinating in the heat and isolation or whether it was simply an unusual bush, bright with blossom or fruit. What is the point? I am general counsel for a large Christian academic health sciences center. Everyday at that center of teaching, healing and research there occur problems that science cannot resolve and that religion cannot adequately address. There are religious fundamentalists who say that scientific evidence that conflicts with their beliefs must be ignored. Some scientists equate faith with superstition and deny any phenomenon that does not have a rational explanation.

I believe that Moses saw that bush burn and heard God’s voice because there is no denying the effect of God’s will on Moses and his people after that. If you knew me before October 4, 1989 when God spoke to me in a spiritual desert and have observed me since then, you would have to conclude that as imperfect and volatile as I am, there is no denying that God’s love has become the driving compulsion of my life. You might have been with Moses at the bush or beside me in that airplane and never saw or heard a thing out of the ordinary. Faith is a personal choice and it cannot be received vicariously. We each must decide who we believe and what we believe.

It would be hard to find in history a more committed rationalist than the mathematician and scientist Blaise Pascal (1623-62). The computer on which you are reading this message owes its existence to his ideas and proofs. He pursued the truth of Jesus Christ with the same vigor. He wrestled with pride, selfishness, materialism, and suffering from his own ill-health, he encountered the God of the burning bush. He wrote down what happened that night on a scrap of paper and copied it over on parchment that he carried on his person for the rest of his life. He wrote:

The year of grace, 1654. Monday, 23 November…From about half past ten in the evening until half past midnight. Fire. ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,’not of philosophers and scholars. Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ. My God and your God. ‘Thy God shall be my God.’The world forgotten, and everything except God. He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels. Greatness of the human soul. ‘O righteous Father, the world had not known thee, but I have known thee.’Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy. I have cut myself off from him. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters. ‘My God will thou forsake me?’Let me not be cut off from him forever! ‘And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. I have cut myself off from him, shunned him, denied him, crucified him. Let me never be cut off from him! He can only be kept by the ways taught in the Gospel. Sweet and total renunciation. Total submission to Jesus Christ and my director. Everlasting joy in return for one day’s effort on earth. I will not forget thy word. Amen

Commonality and conformity of view are no substitute for authenticity of experiencing Christ for one’s self Gal 6:12-14). It is bemusing to realize that we can differ in perspective on so many things and yet demand that we all see God in the same way at the same time. That was the mistake of the Pharisees who repeatedly demanded that Jesus give them a sign from heaven so that they could all reach objective agreement on what they saw. He “sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation” (Mark 8:12). Because God in person is either enough for you, or nothing ever will be. Pascal’s words of testimony bring tears to my eyes and tenderness to my heart because three and one-half centuries later, I recognize the vital truth of his words. Even though I experienced that truth in a different time, different place, and different way, I met the same Jesus Christ that Pascal met.

I often speak or write my belief that there are only two kinds of persons in spiritual terms–those to whom God is an intense reality and those to whom he is not. God was an intense reality for Moses because in the middle of the desert and the limits of his experience and knowledge, God met him and took him the rest of the way. God is an intense reality for me for the same reasons. He has a grip on my life and no matter how I twist and turn I cannot shape that Grip that shapes me in love and dispels the fears that have driven me to this point in my life. I suspect that if you have read this far that God is either an intense reality for you or you have an intense longing for God to be real for you. God will honor an honest longing for his presence (Jer 29:13-14).

Fulfilling the human longing to regain an intimate relationship with our Creator is the mission of Jesus Christ. Everyone of us has the opportunity to see the light of God in the ordinary world of human existence. Because Jesus is the light and brought in his person the enlightenment that Moses found in the burning bush. Moses asked, “Who am I?” God answered and said, “It is not who you are but who ‘ I am’ that matters.” The Apostle John observed that with Jesus Christ, “The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world (Jn 1:9). He continued with the illuminating truth that regardless of the explanations of who we are and what we have done, we belong to God.

He (Jesus) was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God (John 1:10-13).

If you are struggling with this, if you’d like to see and know but can’t, if a bush is only a shrub to you but you want to see more of God in the ordinary circumstances of your life, I leave you with this encouragement: Each child of God gets his Father’s eyes. Tell him you want to see and keep looking.

Next time we will discuss the spiritual significance of removing our shoes on holy ground.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him.” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals.

Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.Kent and his beloved Patricia are enjoying their 31st year of marriage. They are the proud parents of Andrew, a college student.