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Moses - Ex 3:1-15
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
We are moving through the story of Moses in this season. And we have now, so far in this series, seen him grow from a baby. We've caught glimpses of his childhood, hints of his childhood in the royal household of Egypt. And then last week, we began to saw as he questions the world that he lives in. He wonders about whether it is a just world.
Speaker 1:And so we watched as he actually takes the step of challenging the status quo, risking the comfort of the palace to come to the aid of one of his people, the Hebrews, who are in slavery. And it's a very small moment in Moses' story, just a couple of verses, but it's an incredibly significant moment in Moses' journey for me as I read it. Because this is the moment where he chooses very consciously to go and question what it takes to maintain his lifestyle. And he could have very easily stayed sheltered from the plight of the Hebrews by staying in the palace, accepting his wealth, and enjoying his privilege. But one day, he went and he looked and it changed everything for him.
Speaker 1:And so we reflected on perhaps the ways that we need to look at our world and what it is that it takes to maintain our lifestyles. The Midrash actually says that perhaps the reason God left the high places to come and speak with Moses in the story we'll talk about today is because Moses left his place in the palace to go and be with those who suffered in slavery. And so this is something that perhaps we should aspire to in our lives as well, to be with those who are in distress. Distress. And yet, when we left Moses last week, he was running from his country, fleeing from his adopted grandfather, the pharaoh, and settling in the land of Midian.
Speaker 1:And so that's where we're gonna pick up the story this week in Exodus two verse 23. But before we do that, in the gap between last week and here, couple things have happened. Moses has married one of the women that he helped at the well last week, and he has been living with her in Midian long enough that he and his wife have had a son named Gershom. Now just for fun here, verse 22 says that he names his son Gershom because he has become a foreigner in a foreign land. And what we're not sure about is what Gershom means.
Speaker 1:We don't know what that means. And so we suggest it might be a mash up of the Hebrew words gear, which means something like traveler, and the Semitic word sum, which is something like wilderness, and so we get traveler in the wilderness, that kinda makes sense. But probably the most common conclusion about the name Gershom is that it is a pun on the Hebrew verb, the Gerashim, which is, or means to be driven out or expelled. So Moses names his son Gerashim because he has been driven out of Egypt, and he's now stranger in a strange land. That makes a lot of sense, but it also means that his son goes through life with the name, the one who is expelled or the one who's driven out.
Speaker 1:That seems just like a tough way to go through life, the poor guy like that. Probably thought he was getting in trouble a lot at school. Anyway, that's Gershom. Verse 23 reads this way. During that long period, the king of Egypt died.
Speaker 1:The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out. And their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and he was concerned about them. Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian.
Speaker 1: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 this bush does not burn up. When the lord is, when the lord saw that he had gone over to look, god called to him from within the bush.
Speaker 1:Moses, Moses. And Moses said, here I am. Exodus two twenty three through two three verse four. Let's pray. God, we come this day, perhaps ready to celebrate our relationship and our connection, our closeness to you.
Speaker 1:The fact that you would and you have come down from the high places to speak with us, to embrace us, to heal us and point us forward, to bring us back to you. Perhaps, however, that we have come not heard you in a very long time. Perhaps, we come having never heard from you. And so we gather this day because we long to commune with the source of life and breath in this world. We long to believe that you are present and active.
Speaker 1:We long to know your voice in our lives, however it is we would hear it. And sometimes we miss it, and sometimes we're distracted, and we don't know how to slow down, to pause, to be silent enough to listen to you. Our phones buzz, and our calendars notify, and our schedules remind us of how busy we are. And yet, in the midst of all that it takes to participate in this world, we pray that there would be space for us to notice the things that you notice, to hear the things that you pay attention to, to watch for the moments that would capture your attention. Because we trust that if we could become the people who are moved by what moves you, that we would become the people who would learn how to see you clearly in this world.
Speaker 1:And so we ask that you, by your spirit, would speak to our hearts, that you would invite our transformation through your example, that you would teach us, that your voice is always calling and inviting and welcoming us home back to you. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay. Here we are.
Speaker 1:At what is perhaps, apart from maybe the moment at the Red Sea, the most iconic moment in Moses' life, the burning bush. This is a story that I have reflected on, and I've taught about, and I've just generally been fascinated with for a very long time. Because this is truly, in a lot of ways, transformative moment where Moses moves from a ball of human potential towards a destiny of calling and purpose in his life. Now, I think every one of us kinda start as that ball of human potential. We are every one of us infused with all kinds of latent potential by our creator.
Speaker 1:And the trick sometimes is finding the direction and the shape of that destiny that God calls us to that unlocks all that potential and moves us forward. And I think part of what we get to do here in Moses is actually see this moment where he turns the corner. He's already tried to do good last week and it didn't work well for him, but now God calls him and points him and it leads him towards this destiny of freeing a nation from oppression. But before we get to all of that, we need to back up the story a little bit here to the end of chapter two. Because there we read this, that the Israelites groaned in their slavery and they cried out.
Speaker 1:And their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and he was concerned about them. Now, couple things here before we get rolling. First, the Israelites groaned in their slavery.
Speaker 1:This is interesting because the word groaned, anak in Hebrew, and the word cry, zaak in Hebrew, are not necessarily usually words for prayer. In fact, the wording here at no point suggests that the Israelites prayed at all or that they even cried out to God. I think sometimes, as we're reading the bible, we kind of jump to assuming that the story is they cried out to God, and God heard their cries, and the lesson of the story is that God will hear you if you call out to him. That's a good lesson. I'm not saying that's not true.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's totally true. You can read that all throughout the Bible, but that's not actually what we're seeing here. Now here, the Israelites groan. They cry out for help. But in Hebrew, God is not actually the subject of the verb to cry.
Speaker 1:God is the subject of the verb Allah to go up. In fact, to make this clear, the writer here doesn't use the personal name for God, Yahweh, which we'll talk about later. He doesn't even use the normal name for God, Elohim. What he says is, Elohim, the God. Their cry for help went up to the God.
Speaker 1:The takeaway is that as a Hebrew reader coming across this passage, what you would read is something more like this. The Israelites cried out indiscriminately from their oppression, and somehow their cries made their way to the God. Now that might not sound like a big deal. Right? Either way, they cry, he hears, let's get on with the story.
Speaker 1:But there's actually something very powerful and very beautiful being expressed in this part of it. Let me ask you this. Have you ever cried out in pain not knowing who you were talking to? We do this when we get hurt. Right?
Speaker 1:We stub our toe, and we yell, and we scream, we cry. I did it last night. There's something innately human about calling out when we hurt. I was walking my dog the other day, and he has this tendency to grab sticks when we walk. He likes sticks.
Speaker 1:He likes branches. That's great. But he also loves huge branches. You might call them trees that he can barely drag along the ground. Here's an image of him carrying some sticks that are far too large to reasonably expect to play fetch with.
Speaker 1:This is what he does. This one on the side here, he carried this for about a kilometer as we walked. It was ridiculous. It's all over my Instagram account, pictures of my dog carrying sticks, which is fine, because despite the fact that he's a golden retriever, he's not great at the retrieval part. He gets stuff, he just doesn't bring it back to you.
Speaker 1:Anyway, here's one of him just trying to sit on my wife's lap, because that's just cute. So there you go. He's a big dog. Anyway, right now, in our neighborhood, we live around the corner here, there are all kinds of trees broken down and split up, huge branches all over from the massive snowstorm we had in September. And so we're walking this week, and, we're going, and he picks up this huge six, seven foot branch, and runs up from behind me in the office chair, and just nails me in the back of my knee.
Speaker 1:It's like seven in the morning, he cracks me in the back of the knee with this thing, and it's incredibly surprisingly painful, and I actually just screamed out. I was like, what's going on? Half in pain, half in anger, half in frustration because my dog has done this before, and yeah, know that's a 150%, that's how terrible it was. But as my voice broke the morning silence and reverberated against the McHugh Bluff, waking up my neighbors, I was sort of embarrassed about this. But this is instinct.
Speaker 1:Right? This is what we do. We don't know why it doesn't make it feel better to scream, but we do. It's as if we have a sense that the universe should somehow care about our pain, that my neighbors should know my dog hurt me. It's as if we have a sense that maybe the universe does care about our pain.
Speaker 1:And perhaps, somewhere deep inside, we actually trust that someone is listening to us. Maybe you've done this before. Before. Maybe you didn't have the courage to name God when you cried. That would have taken too much.
Speaker 1:It would have been too hard to actually call it a prayer, but you lost something, or you lost someone, and you didn't know what to do, and so you simply cried. The the world wasn't fair. It wasn't right. You had seen something that was unjust, and you couldn't make sense of it. And the only thing in that moment you could do was let tears flow.
Speaker 1:Now here, we are told that even our unaimed prayers somehow find their way to God. And for me, it is comforting to be reminded that everything from the inarticulate yelp I release when I hit my thumb with a hammer in the garage, to the groaning of my heart over injustice that I see in this world. Everything from my most eloquent and theologically appropriate request, all the way down to the most desperate ill conceived prayer I have ever uttered, all still find their way to the God. To put it another way, perhaps we could say that God's ability to hear will always be more important than our ability to pray. And so, hears their cries.
Speaker 1:He remembers his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And here, remembered is the Hebrew word zakar. It means to call to mind, to remember. It also means to act in Hebrew. And so it's important that when we remember someone, when God calls someone to mind, don't just remember them, do something about it.
Speaker 1:But God remembers his people, so he looks on the Israelites and he was concerned about them. That's how the NIV translates this. And there's some debate about exactly what we should say here in English. Because the word concerned here in the NIV is the verb to know in Hebrew. It's a verb we've talked about a few times this fall.
Speaker 1:And so one way to read this is that he hears the cries of his people, he remembers his promises to them, he looks on them, and then he knows them, he learns about them, he knows them, he's aware of them. And so the NIV goes with, he's concerned, he knows about their plight. But scholars have pointed out that this actually seems backwards to what we would suspect of God in Hebrew narrative. God doesn't come to know us by hearing us and remembering us and watching us. Those actions grow out of the fact that God already knows us.
Speaker 1:That's why he listens. That's why he pays attention. That's why he looks on us. And so they point out that the grammar in this sentence is kind of fluid. And that perhaps a better translation would be not that God knew them, but God remembered them, he looked on them, and so God said, I will make myself known to them.
Speaker 1:And for me, that's actually a beautiful parallel to where the story started. The Israelites, not knowing where to turn, cried out from their oppression, but somehow their cries made their way to God, so God made himself known to them. And truthfully, that actually sounds a lot more like my story than I would care to admit at times. I mean, I would like to tell you that I know my theology and therefore I know what I'm doing, but the truth is, we are all, every one of us, doing our best to flail in the dark until God shows up and turns on the light at times. And so God sees them, he's concerned, and he says, I will make myself known to them.
Speaker 1:And that makes a lot of sense in the story from what comes next. Because we read that Moses was tending his flocks of his father-in-law. And he had gone to the far side of the wilderness, and there an angel of the Lord appeared to him. Now, wilderness here is a very important word in the scriptures. Obviously, for the Hebrews, they will escape from Egypt later in the story of Moses, But they will end up wandering in the wilderness for forty years before reaching the promised land.
Speaker 1:We'll get to that story a little later in this series. In the New Testament, Jesus goes out to fast and be tempted for forty days in the wilderness. And so this Hebrew word, midbar, is a particularly loaded word in the scriptures. Now you can say to me, well, what does it matter that Jesus is in the wilderness in the New Testament? What does it matter that the Israelites get stuck in the wilderness for forty years?
Speaker 1:We're still at the start of Moses. We haven't got to those stories yet. And I would say to you, that's not how stories work. They prefigure, and they foreshadow, and they point us to where they're going. So in a moment, we're going to be introduced to the personal name for God, Yahweh.
Speaker 1:But, if we go back to Genesis, all the way through Genesis, the name Yahweh is used by the writer even before God reveals that name to Moses. In fact, see the capital l o r d on the screen right now? That's the name Yahweh. In a second, God is gonna make a big deal about telling Moses his name, and the writer's already using that name right here. The point is the scriptures are constructed for an oral culture that's heard these stories a thousand times before.
Speaker 1:There's no spoiling the punch line. Everyone knows the punch line. Everyone's heard the story a thousand times. And so when you're writing them out, you're not trying to hide pieces, you're trying to call them to mind and have people remember. So when Moses is found by God on the far side of the wilderness, a word that is connected to running from God, being separated from God, being distant from God.
Speaker 1:It's not an accident. It's put there by the writer on purpose. As one scholar puts it, the urgent point of this passage is theology, not geography. Moses has fled from his home. He's left his people.
Speaker 1:He's married a Midianite. He is the future leader of a nation, but right now, he's tending flocks on the far side running away from God. And he's not actually running from God. He has successfully escaped from God as far as he's concerned. And so, would it be too obvious right now to point out that as far as we think we have run from God at times, or the idea of God, or the reach of God, or the grace of God, we have not actually gone too far.
Speaker 1:Verse two says this, that even on the far side of the wilderness, the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in flames of fire from within a bush. And Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So he said, I will go over and see this strange sight, why the bush does not burn. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses. And Moses said, here I am.
Speaker 1:Now, sometimes in church we talk about seekers and how we have to be sensitive to them, people looking for God. And perhaps, here we are reminded that if a game of hide and seek is going on, it is not God who's doing the hiding. God is the one who is seeking out all of us. But this is one of the most fascinating passages in all of the scriptures. Moses sees a bush on fire.
Speaker 1:He notices that it doesn't burn up, and when he notices that, God speaks to him. Now remember, at this point in the story, there's actually no indication that Moses knows anything about the God of the Hebrews. He grew up in an Egyptian household after all. He took enough interest in his people to go out and watch them at work one day, but we've not heard anything to suggest he's taken up an interest in Hebrew theology. Even here, all he does is notices a bush burning and go and look at it.
Speaker 1:And that's not even all that remarkable. Bushes burn in the desert all the time. It's not a strange thing for a dry bit of kindling to catch on fire in the hot sun. In fact, the only thing that's remarkable here is it doesn't burn up. In fact, the text actually says that God waits in the fire until Moses goes over before he says anything.
Speaker 1:And so some of the rabbis used to teach that the appearance of God here was not a miracle, it was a test. That the God who heard the cries of those in pain was looking for someone who would notice things in the world around them. God was looking for someone who was aware of his space. And God was looking for someone who was in touch with their surroundings. Either way, he notices notices, God speaks to him, and what he says is this, he says, Moses.
Speaker 1:It's incredibly significant to me. The very first thing God says to Moses is Moses. Remember, this is Moses who murdered someone in our passage last week. Moses who left his people in slavery last week. Moses who started a new life on the far side of the wilderness with his new wife last week.
Speaker 1:And yet when God speaks to Moses, he begins with the name Moses. Sometimes, if there's anything we've said to those people who are looking for God is that God knows your sins, and then hopefully we added to them and he also wants to forgive them. And perhaps, what we should have started with is simply this, God knows your name because that's where God starts. Do you know we actually have scientific data that shows that our brains are very literally hardwired to hear our own names? You and I, we can pick our name out in a conversation with alarming accuracy.
Speaker 1:It's called the cocktail effect. You can look it up on Wikipedia. It's actually pretty interesting. I thought of talking about it, I'll leave it for now. If they hook your brain up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging device, they can actually see the way that your brain will light up when your name is said like no other word.
Speaker 1:So I find it incredible that when God speaks to Moses, he doesn't start with a list of his failings. He doesn't scold him for his posture or position. He doesn't ask him, what are you doing here on the far side of the wilderness? What he starts with is Moses. In fact, just in case he missed it or he misses the significance of it, God says it twice, Moses, Moses.
Speaker 1:Can I suggest that if the only thing you have ever heard from God or about God is condemnation or consternation, you've probably been listening to someone other than God? God starts with Moses and then he continues. He says, I've heard the cries from Israel. I've seen their pain and suffering. I know their hardships, he says, and so I have come down to save them.
Speaker 1:And so I am sending you Moses. You who went out and looked, who saw your people in slavery, who noticed the bush that did not burn up. I'm here to save them, so you're going to Pharaoh. Which is interesting as well, because for God rescuing his people and sending someone to do it are exactly the same thing. Sometimes, if you have wondered where God is in your life, maybe you should look at the people around you.
Speaker 1:And perhaps God has already sent someone to be there and you missed them. But Moses says to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and I say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me what is his name, what then shall I tell them? So God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you.
Speaker 1:And there it is. The God who knows Moses by name, the God who knows you and I by name now tells us his name. And the divine name has been part of both Jewish and Christian speculation ever since. The Jews still to this day won't even say it out of reverence. In Christian circles, we tend to pronounce it Yahweh, y h w h.
Speaker 1:But here, it is given as Hayah, Asher, I am who I am is how the NIV translates it. Probably better technically would be this, I will be who I will be because the verbs are imperfect. And in Hebrew, that usually means future tense. But even that seems to miss the point of what God is saying. I don't think a technical translation here will ever completely get it.
Speaker 1:And so some rabbis speculated that perhaps the verb hayah, in Hebrew, the verb to be, I am, was meant to mimic the sound of breathing and breath in and out. And so they actually taught that you truthfully speak the name of God every time your lungs fill and expand and collapse, which is a beautiful idea. The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the old testament, when they translated this, they went with in Greek, is I am the existing one. That's not bad. I like that.
Speaker 1:Mettinger goes with this. My name will be I am because I am. I like that too. But probably my favorite attempt to capture what's going on here goes back to a scholar named G. H.
Speaker 1:Davies, who translated the divine name this way in 1967. I am who and what and where and when and how and even why you will discover I am. I am what you will discover me to be. Here's why this is important to me. Because divine names were a dime a dozen in the ancient Near East world.
Speaker 1:Almost every name for God in the Bible shows up somewhere else, in some other religious tradition to describe some other deity. In fact, when Moses says, suppose I go to the Israelites and I say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, the word he uses there for God is El. That is the generic name for any God you want to talk about in the ancient Near East. So his question is essentially this. Okay.
Speaker 1:I get it. You're a God. You speak out of fire. You know who I am. But what God are you?
Speaker 1:Who do I tell them you are? So the ancient Egyptian god, sun god, a 10, was known as the valiant shepherd, the good shepherd. Another Egyptian god, Amon Ra, was worshipped as the lord of what is, he who made what is below and what is above. The Babylonian god, Enlil, was known as judge and decision maker whose breath is life it self. So if the God of the burning bush had said to Moses, go and tell the people I am the good shepherd, the father of all, the creator of the world, the source of breath and life, all that is good, he would have sounded great.
Speaker 1:But he still could have been mistaken for any number of gloriously named angry, petty, small gods who demanded unblinking devotion all while supporting the same kinds of slavery and oppression the Israelites were suffering underneath. You see the beauty of what this god says, and the poetry of what the God of the burning bush says is that names are important to you, not me. You see, I can't tell you my name until you get to know who I am. I can't describe myself to you until you get to see my character. Because I'm not interested in you taking shortcuts.
Speaker 1:I'm not interested in hearing you repeat back the right answer. I'm not even interested in having you say all kinds of really nice things about me until after you've taken the time to experience those things and know them and sink them deep into your bones. I am who you will discover me to be. That's who I am. It is perhaps the most profound answer to the question, who are you I have ever heard.
Speaker 1:And it's one I am deeply interested in imitating in my life. We get asked this all the time. Who are you? What do you do? Right?
Speaker 1:My name is Jeremy. And my career is I'm a father and a husband, I like coffee and Pearl Jam and Apple computers, but none of that really matters all that much, does it? None of that really tells you anything important about who I am. Because the only thing that matters at the end of the day is how I treat you. How do I care about you?
Speaker 1:How do I do my best to love you, to support you, to help you become the person that God wants you to be? I could tell you, listen, I am incredibly generous and caring. I'm sensitive and warm. But unless I act that way, what's the difference? Because that's who I really how I choose to act, how I care for you, who I am in relationship to you.
Speaker 1:And here, the God of the burning bush says to Moses, you could call me whatever you want, but it won't matter until you know it to be true. It's who I am, it's who you will discover me to be, and I find it endlessly fascinating. That the same God who says to Moses, I can't tell you my name until you get to know me, is by that very same logic, the only person who knows Moses well enough to actually call him by his name. Because he knows what it means. Think about that.
Speaker 1:The only person in the universe who really knows what it means to call me Jeremy is also the same one who invites me to discover what it would mean to call him Yahweh. Jeremy, I know you. I really do. Inside and out, and I am who you will now discover me to be. Now, remember back at the start?
Speaker 1:When I said that probably a better translation of the end of chapter two is that God would make himself known to the Israelites. Now, perhaps we see what God meant by that. Because he didn't just mean he would tell them his name. He didn't just mean he would explain some ideas about himself to them. He wasn't even talking about giving them a set of rules to understand him by as much as we sometimes want to read the bible that way.
Speaker 1:Instead, ultimately, what he meant all along was that he would enter into a relationship whereby the Israelites would come to know him. And maybe you have wanted to know God for a very long time. And you have buried your head in books and theology. You have submerged yourself to the eyeballs in religious community. You have jumped from spiritual practice to liturgical tradition all in an attempt to understand God.
Speaker 1:But perhaps, part of what we see here is that the first step in coming to know God is simply trusting that God wants to be known. And I'm not saying that makes everything easy. I'm not saying that takes all the work away. I'm simply suggesting that trusting that God actually wants to be known moves us from a posture of searching and striving and struggling to find him and moves us into a place, a posture of discovery and receptivity and adventure as God reveals himself to us, and there's a difference. In chapter three verse five, when God speaks to Moses from the burning bush, he says to him, take off your sandals for the place where you're standing is holy ground.
Speaker 1:And of course, Moses had already been standing there before God spoke to him. He's a a shepherd for goodness sake. He's probably walked over that land a thousand times before as he tended to his flock. But now, in this moment, having realized God's presence there with him, the space becomes holy. The first step in coming to know God is trusting that God wants to be known.
Speaker 1:Because trusting he wants to be known allows you to begin looking for him anywhere. And looking for him anywhere makes everywhere a possibly holy place. Now today, as we close, I would like to invite you to welcome God's presence into this space. Not because it's church and not because it's a sanctuary, not because it's any of those things, but because it could be holy if we recognize God with us. And so what I'd like you to do is simply this, is close your eyes as we move towards a prayer together.
Speaker 1:Everyone here, close your eyes, to relax your shoulders and your jaw for a moment to consciously choose to allow tension and anxiety to slip out from you. To be aware of your breath, the rise and fall of your lungs. Life and breath and the divine name on your lips. And in that space of clarity and calm to see if you can't notice something of God's presence here with you. And we're not looking for burning bushes.
Speaker 1:We're not searching for words or sounds to complicate the experience. We are simply here to listen for the name of God and the rise and fall of our breath. The simple fact that our life speaks God's name. And so as you say the name Yahweh with your breath, by simply being alive, I pray that what you would hear is him speaking your name back to you with love. And perhaps in that moment, in this space, it would become holy.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. God, we come to you this day. Aware that we are so busy and distracted, we walk past you a thousand times every hour. And we're not aware enough to realize that where we are standing is holy ground because you are with us, beside us. Responding to your name as the rise and fall of our lungs speaks it.
Speaker 1:And so God, in this moment, we settle ourselves and we try to recognize you here with us. And perhaps, we have seen you before, and we've recognized you in our lives and we've celebrated that. But maybe it's been a very long time. And so we ask that by your spirit, you would remind us that you are always present. If we have felt alone and lonely, we ask that you would speak healing and grace and relationship back to us.
Speaker 1:If we have been too busy to notice us, we ask that you would speak rest and calm and awareness to us. If we have pushed away and we have run to the far side of the wilderness in attempt to escape you, we pray that we would sense you. Not chasing us down in an angry aggressive way, but simply gently inviting us back to the warmth of your embrace. God, help us to be the kinds of people that see you in the small spaces of our life, moments of care, concern, grace, perhaps even pain. And that when we see you, we would stop, we would recognize, we would point others to it.
Speaker 1:You're a great God. And in the strong name of the risen Christ, pray. Amen.
Speaker 2:This is a podcast of Kensington Commons Church. We believe that God is invested in the renewal of all things. Therefore, we wanna live the good news by being part of the rhythms of our city as good neighbors, good friends, and good citizens in our common life. Join us on Sunday or visit us online at commonschurch.org.