burning bushes and other ordinary stuff

At SU, we have a worship celebration that meets weekly on Sunday evenings called SUP. The participants eat a soup supper, then worship together at an emergent service of word and table, then eat dessert together. The casual atmosphere and progressive theology is inviting to those with questions who want to talk about things. I'd imagine that those who want definitive answers to linear questions might find it frustrating.

We decided to work several weeks with the Hebrew Bible lectionary passages about Moses' life, call, and work in Exodus. Currently, we are looking at the burning bush incident. As a child, a Jewish friend of mine got in trouble in Hebrew school for asking over and over, "But how did Moses know that the bush wasn't burning up? Maybe it was just taking a long time!"

In our planning session, the question was raised, "What if all the bushes are burning, but we don't look aside to see them?" God is speaking to us in so many ways and places. How do we keep track of all of them? How can we be constantly "called" to do super-extraordinary stuff every minute of every day? By definition, wouldn't that make the call "ordinary?"

I stopped to listen this afternoon, sitting quietly at my desk, trying to think of a call to worship to use this week. Here's what God said:

God speaks, re-inhabiting the very breath that brought creation into being,
The very Spirit that re-creates us each day.
God speaks in the thundering waves of ocean and emotion,
The waves of silent, sinking heart,
Of whispering desperation and breathless joy;
God speaks.

God speaks.
Within the synergy of our wholeness,
Far greater than the sum of our parts,
Without the anxiety of good-enough or have-to,
We listen in anticipation and watch with hope
As we are called.
(c) 2008 delynial returns