My wife and I moved to a small town a couple of years ago. It’s out in the country and we usually have to travel a good 20 or 30 minutes to reach civilization. Like most people, we have our normal routes we take every time we go somewhere and we don’t veer too much from what we know. I like to do most of the driving and I have discovered that I am more of a destination guy than an enjoy-the-journey guy. I want to get where I am going and I don’t always pay too much attention to my surroundings in the course of completing my mission.

Even with that said, however, you would think I would have some idea of the kinds of things we drive past. I know there are some homes, a couple of gas stations, and lots of corn fields, but when my wife suggested we take our son to go visit the tank, I thought she was pulling my leg. It was a nice day out and she thought it would be fun for him to see the tank that sits outside of the VFW on the main road that leads out of our town. I assured her that there wasn’t a tank, and both she and my parents were adamant that that tank had been sitting right by the side of the road for like 15 years.

It turns out they were right. There is literally a massive tank sitting by the side of the road. I had somehow missed it despite driving past it hundreds of times. It’s easy to miss some pretty big stuff when we are moving through life.

I love the story of Moses’ first encounter with God in the book Exodus. Moses was a shepherd who was taking care of his father-in-law’s flock when one day he saw a bush that was on fire but wasn’t burning up. The text tells us that,

“the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” When the Lordsaw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”^[1]

I find it fascinating that God calls out to Moses after God saw that Moses had turned aside to look at the bush. God caused the bush to burn so that it was possible for Moses to see, but God wasn’t screaming out of the bush at him. God didn’t say anything until Moses stopped and looked at the bush when he noticed it was on fire but not being consumed. Moses saw the tank.

Moses could have easily walked right past the bush. He could have easily been distracted by a million other things. He could have been fretting over something that happened that morning, maybe an argument he had with his wife or some fear that had been nagging at him. He could have been lost in thinking about the future. How would they eat next month? Where would his children go to school? How was he going to help his people? Moses could have missed the bush, and with it missed one of the most important interactions anyone in this entire Bible has with God.

Instead, Moses sees the bush and turns aside to engage it. Moses was living in the present. He was aware. It doesn’t mean he was ignoring everything else in his life, but he had enough space in the present to notice what was going on around him. He was present to his current situation, feelings, and place, and because of this, God revealed God’s name to him and explains that God has seen what the Israelites were suffering in Egypt and was sending Moses back to lead the people out of slavery and into freedom.

I wonder what we miss when we aren’t living with enough space in the present moment to actually be present. Sometimes it feels like God has gone silent or doesn’t care about what we are going through. What if the issue isn’t that God isn’t responding? What if the issue is that we are moving too fast to see the burning bushes all around us? God is waiting for us to turn aside but we are so focused on the past or the future, where we are coming from or where we are going, that we miss that God is actually right there by the side of the road.

May you make the space today to live in the present, see the tanks, explore the burning bushes, and experience God in life-giving, life-changing ways.

^[1]The Holy Bible: English Standard Version(Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016), Ex 3:2–4.