Noticing God in Your Midst

If God walked past you, would you notice?

That might sound like a weird question, but what if it happened more than we thought? The author of Hebrews implies that something like this may happen from time to time (Hebrews 13:2). Whether or not you believe that this could really happen, I do wonder how many of us would actually notice if God showed up in our lives. 

We have all made blunders because we engage in too many places. Perhaps you’re like me. When returning a message or phone call, I start out with, “I’m sorry! I’ve just been SO busy.” I have wondered if we now live in a world where we use the word “busy” to simply justify our priorities. I know that I have failed on numerous occasions in different areas of my life just because I was so busy, spinning too many plates at once.

I think we sometimes expect God to slap us across the face when He really wants our attention. He did this with people in the Bible from time to time, so why not with us, too? Sometimes God’s attention-getter can be a little more subtle, though, and that is when we can often miss it. 

I can’t help but think about Moses and the burning bush in Exodus 3. When we read the story, we like to skip to God speaking to Moses, but I can’t help but think about how the encounter began in the first place: 

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” (Exodus 3:1-3; NIV)

I am by no means an expert on fire, but I know one when I see one. In order to notice that this bush was not burning up, Moses couldn’t just glance at it and move along. He had to watch it for some time. As he saw that it wasn’t burning up, he turned aside to go and encounter this unique thing in his world. It was there that Moses had the first of his many divine encounters. 

God was going to get Moses’ attention one way or another because we know that God’s will is always carried out. However, I’m fascinated by Moses’ ability to notice this strange sight on the side of an obscure mountain. When you think about Moses’ life, the reason Moses noticed then might make a little more sense. Between being part Hebrew and part Egyptian but neither one fully, Moses had a lot of commotion in his life (both inner and outer!). We have no idea if God had been calling to Moses long before this because Moses was probably not able to pay much attention to the things around him that might seem different. 

It wasn’t until Moses had to run into the desert and confront who he was and what he had done that he was able to notice the presence and movement of God. He had likely struggled with his identity for his entire life, and this struggle drove him to kill an Egyptian.

I’m inclined to think that anyone reading this probably hasn’t committed murder, but identity is a struggle we all deal with at some point in our lives and, personally speaking, it’ll drive you to do some pretty dumb and/or outrageous things. My hope is that we are all able to find the time and space to do what Moses was doing before the burning bush appeared: withdraw. 

Withdrawing is one of the hardest things to do in our success- and efficiency-driven culture. It doesn’t mean quitting so much as finding the time and space to allow our cups to be filled with the presence and movement of God. 

While we love the idea that we can remain busy and productive while God just bursts onto the scene, it is pretty rare for it to happen that way. 

The late, great Dallas Willard put it so well when he said the following:

“Generally speaking, God will not compete for our attention. Occasionally a Saul gets knocked to the ground (Acts 9) and so on, but in most cases, we should expect that God will not run us over. We must be open to the possibility of God’s addressing us in whatever way He chooses or else we may walk right past a burning bush instead of saying, as Moses did, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up.” (Dallas Willard, Hearing God)

May we be bold enough to find the time and space to allow ourselves to notice the burning bushes all around us. May we notice and participate in the presence and movement of God so that His glory and will may be carried out to the ends of the earth.