Are We There Yet?

O come my people, unto me out of Sodom and Gomorra,
Egypt and Babylon; come now out of desert and the sea
unto me; the mountain follows where springs of water
or of wine, as rivers run. -Dunstan Massey

There's fire on the mountain. Our God is a consuming fire. We mignt see this if one would pause long enough to notice. Did not Moses have to "turn aside" and see this thing. A bush in flames and yet not consumed. Did Moses see himself in the fire? Consumed by fire but never perishing. Is this what we mean when one says, "he is on fire for the Lord"? I think not. One does not produce fire for God. He is fire and we are his resource if he so chooses to engulf us.

C.S. Lewis described himself as a "reluctant convert." Is this not Moses, the man on the mountain? He stopped to look and became enchanted. He never was the same again though at times he may have regretted it. A man of deep confliction who preferred the solitude of the desert and yet was offered up as a sacrifice to the masses. It became his legacy to take urban sprawl into the desert. Is it a sin to shatter the silence?

Some doors should remain unopened, rocks unturned, the quest not taken. Did Moses ever wonder if the mountain was a "bridge too far"? Moses' calling was a thing of pleasure and pain. The tail had been "pinned upon the donkey." He would go before Pharoah and lead God's people into the desert. "This shall be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain" (Ex. 3.12). I will never grasp this, the uncertainty of God's sign. "Get them here and we'll worship on this mountain". I thought signs were supposed to come before the quest began not after it has been completed? What good does that do the desert wanderer? He is forced to stare into the sacred fire. Ever the threat of consumption, be it the journey or the flame. He is a crucible......... Sola Gracia, WHB