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BURNING BUSH

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The call of Moses is an all too familiar story to most Christians.  Moses intervenes in a dispute between an Egyptian and a Hebrew slave, and he kills the Egyptian.  Fearing the Pharoah’s wrath, Moses escapes to the land of Midian, and settles there as a shepherd.  It is here in the wilderness at Horeb while tending his flock when Moses’s attention is called by a voice coming from within a burning bush.  I want to reflect on how Moses’s attention turned to the burning bush.

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PRAYING TO HAVE PROBLEMS

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“Lord, bigyan mo kami ng problema.”  The first time I said that prayer was in 2009 during a prayer for empowerment for the team that was assigned to handle the Holy Triduum preparations of our prayer community.   Naturally, my team was surprised about that prayer because they expected me, as the team leader of the service team, to ask the Lord to bless us so that everything would fall into place, that the event would go smoothly, and so on.  After all this was not an easy service, and it involved tremendous amount of preparation and coordination, with many moving parts. The odds of a foul up were stacked against us. And then this was my prayer: “Give us problems, Lord.”

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WHO’S GOING TO TAKE THE CREDIT

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When this is finally all over, this pandemic situation I mean, I wonder who’s going to take credit for it ending? Whom are they going to post in the cover of Time magazine as Person of the Year, or who will be granted the Nobel Peace Prize for paving the critical path towards the redemption of all mankind from this dreaded coronavirus?

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WE REMEMBER

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“We remember how He loved us.”  Indeed, God loves us.  And often times, God shows us His love through other people.  Often during a prayer meeting, I would invite the participants to recall to mind the person who had evangelized them and who encouraged them to know God in a personal way.  In my particular case, it was my Papang, the late Architect Felipe Mendoza, who prayed long and hard, and in fact pleaded with me to come to a prayer meeting where I could get to know God as my God.  Today is Papang’s birthday, and I remember how he loved me.

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THE OBVIOUS EXPLAINED

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Elsewhere I wrote an article entitled, “You Will Have Problems“, quoting what Jesus said in John 16:33 “In this world you will have troubles.” What was His point? Where is the good news in that? I invited my readers to go through a discerned inspiration and assemble the sentences found in 9 verses that I picked form the gospel of John, to come up with a coherent explanation for this verse.

Of course there is no “correct” answer. But let me share with you my personal re-composition of the nine verses mentioned in that article with an explanation of why I sequenced it this way.

In this world you will have trouble. Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. But take heart!  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.You believe in God; believe also in me.  I am the way and the truth and the life.  I came from the Father and entered the world; I have overcome the world.  Now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father.  My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.  As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.

So there.  The obvious and the not so obvious combined to reveal the good news. 

For me I choose to highlight the reference of Jesus to the troubles in THIS world, versus THE PLACE that he has prepared for His followers. We are all doomed to a life that will not be without troubles … in THIS world. But for those who believe in Jesus, the good news is that Jesus has prepared a place for his followers … a place that is NOT IN THIS WORLD.  It’s a place where there is no death nor mourning nor crying nor pain (Rev 21:4). “In my Father’s house”, Jesus says.

In the meantime that we are in this world, and while we await the return of Jesus, what shall we do, and how should we deal with our troubles? How do we live in this troubled world with peace, and with the joy that Jesus gives?  I shall deal with that in a separate article, but for now leave with you the following encouragement:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Rom 8:38-39 (NIV)