"I Must Turn Aside"
It was just enough to cause Moses to stop and turn aside.
Exodus 3:1-15
October 4, 2026
Todd R. Wright
I have a question: What did Moses know about God before the burning bush incident?
Not much, it would seem.
Scripture says he was under his mother’s care until he was weaned. That means that for the first three years of his life he would have heard her pray and sing and tell stories. Maybe she shared about the mighty deeds of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Maybe she taught him about the God who created everything, and called Abraham to leave his home for a land that would be revealed, and who watched over Joseph and raised him to become Pharoah’s right-hand man.
But then he moved into the Pharaoh’s palace. The Egyptians worshipped different gods –
“a vast pantheon including creator gods like Amun-Ra, deities of the afterlife like Osiris and Isis, and animal-form gods like Sobek (the crocodile god).”
I imagine they elbowed their way into his heart as he went with his adopted family to the various temples to carry out their sacred rituals. If the Hebrew God was ever mentioned, it was probably in mocking terms – for what kind of God allows his people to be enslaved for 400 years?
Then, after he was forced to flee across the border, he spent decades married to the daughter of a Midianite priest who served other gods. I imagine he felt compelled to worship with them.
The Midianites “worshipped multiple deities, including Baal-peor and Ashteroth.” But, since Midian, was Abraham’s son by Keturah, maybe they had a lingering respect for the Hebrew God.
We are also told that Moses was tending his father-in-law’s flocks “beyond the wilderness”.
Perhaps that stark beauty of sand and scrub-brush and scorpions was yet another window into the divine for someone looking for God.
John Calvin “viewed the natural world as a stunning, divine revelation of its Maker, famously calling the universe the ‘theatre of God's glory’. He strongly affirmed the ‘Book of Nature’ as a legitimate source of general revelation, though he maintained that human sin severely limits our ability to truly see it.”
Therefore “we require the Scriptures to act as spectacles (glasses). Just as a person with blurred vision needs glasses to read a book clearly, a human needs the light of the Bible to correctly read the Book of Nature and see the Creator clearly.”
Moses didn’t have the option of reading scripture, so God found another way – appearing in a burning bush that was not consumed!
It was just enough to cause Moses to stop and turn aside. That captured my attention!
The late writer, Annie Dillard, tells a story in her book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
“When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion. For some reason, I always ‘hid’ the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions.
After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawing, at the thought of the first lucky passer-by who would receive in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe. But I never lurked about. I would go straight home and not give the matter another thought, until, some months later, I would be gripped again by the impulse to hide another penny.”
I wonder if God is regularly gripped by the same impulse to hide wonders for us to find?
Dillard seems to think so, for she muses:
“The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. But — and this is the point — who gets excited by a mere penny?
If you follow one arrow, if you crouch motionless on a bank to watch a tremulous ripple thrill on the water and are rewarded by the sight of a muskrat kit paddling from its den, will you count that sight [as] a chip of copper only, and go your rueful way? It is dire poverty indeed when a man is so malnourished and fatigued that he won't stoop to pick up a penny.
But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.
It is that simple. What you see is what you get.”
So, what does Moses see when he turns aside? And why does he turn aside in the first place?
Let’s tackle that second question first.
It could be he is naturally curious – always ready to follow a snake slithering into a pile of rocks or to catalog a bit of color flowering amidst a landscape of beige.
It could be that he is bored-to-tears after 40 years with a mixed flock of sheep and goats for conversation partners.
It could be that he is an adrenaline-junkie, and this feels like the first thing that might raise his pulse since driving a chariot at high speed.
It could be he is worried about the blaze spreading and burning what remains of the precious pastureland, so he is acting like a junior fire tower spotter.
Or it could be that he isn’t sure why he stopped, only that he was hungering for … something.
Blasé Paschal is credited with saying, “There is a god-shaped hole in the heart of everyone which cannot be satisfied by anything but God.”
But to get back to my first question, according to Exodus, once Moses stops to see the sight, he hears something: God speaks … after nearly 400 years, the voice that once boomed out, “Let there be light!” now says, “Take off your sandals. You are standing on holy ground!”
I like to imagine that God is smiling, playfully, as the warning is proclaimed!
After all, holy, in this case, does not mean pure – the landscape is dirty and dusty and bristling with cactus spines – but rather set aside for something important.
It is holy because God is there. And so Moses encounters a God unlike the ones he knew in Egypt and Midian, a God more like the one his mother once told him about:
who is personal and present, not distant and distracted;
who has heard his people’s cries of suffering in Egypt, and is determined to free them;
who prefers to work in partnership with the most unlikely of people; and
who refuses to listen to reason, even when confronted by a down-on-his-luck prince of Egypt,
but who is willing to engage in a spirited debate!
When the editors of the Pentateuch were making decisions about what to keep in and what to toss aside, I like to think they kept this story because we, like Moses, need to turn aside.
We are constantly confronted with a range of entities claiming to be gods, clamoring for our attention, boasting of their power, threatening to smite us if we do not do their bidding!
Moses has spent a lifetime with such gods. You probably have too!
We, like Moses, are tempted to rush straight ahead, focused on our trivial task, even when it is actually keeping somebody else’s flock, even when it gives us no joy, even when it ignores the pressing needs of our neighbors.
But here is this scripture, this story, that introduces us to a very different God: one who is coy about his name, but cares deeply for the down-trodden; one who is strangely humble and helpful; one who promises to be with Moses no matter what.
We need that God – a God who is ready to be part of our lives, if we’ll just turn aside! Amen
According to the AI summary of Egyptian religion during the time of Moses
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