We return today to another Old Testament figure, with quite a depressing tale, in which “the dice are loaded” in days which cycle through themselves. He talks of living a half-life – half-Hebrew (by nature) and half-Egyptian (by nurture), and how difficult this has made things – and why he lashed out when he saw ‘his people’ being mistreated.
“Today”, however, he has made a decision to move forward. The past cannot be changed, but the way that he moves forward can be. As he faces the Burning Bush, and is given his ‘commission’, he questions his qualifications (or lack of them). As he looks at the bush, he thinks of the passions that have consumed him in the past, and how they have almost devoured him. He thinks of the future and questions when they’ll be another “from the depths of someone ordinary like me who is also able to say yes to God” (Mary, no, I think Jesus?). “He will be salvation.”
#Advent20
The final email from Brian offers a call to be ‘in the present’:
Of course, we are celebrating this week the coming of the Word-made-flesh, for whom this, here, was the only place he was prepared to be – on Earth, with us, one of us. Fully present, wherever he found himself. Can you imagine Jesus complaining – for a second – about where he’d ended up?
How much time have we spent wishing we were elsewhere? Can we put that energy to better use – and – focus on the positives in our lives?
