Whenever I eat mashed potatoes, I remember the scene in the 70’s movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In the movie, Richard Dreyfus frightens his children by making a mesa out of mashed potatoes on his plate. He spent the rest of the movie trying to find that mountain mesa. This movie along with ET and others appealed to the interest in extra-terrestrials who might come to the earth. More rare than towers of mashed potatoes are close encounters of the “God-kind".
Moses’ life was a miracle. He was born under a death sentence but survived. Not only did the Pharaoh not succeed in killing him, but the Pharaoh saw Moses grow up in his own household as an adopted child of Pharaoh’s daughter. He spent forty years believing he was a “somebody.” Moses was born to deliver his people, but somehow they missed the memo. When he tried to rescue them, they rejected him. So Moses ran for his life to Midian. For the next forty years, he lived the ignominious life of a nobody – a shepherd in the mountains.
Everything changed when Moses saw a burning bush. He encountered God face to face. When he saw the bush burning but not consumed, he stopped to look. Then God spoke to him and told him to take off his shoes. Moses did and found his mission for life. He discovered what God could do with a nobody who used to think he was a somebody.
Jesus’ life was a miracle. Born under a death sentence, he survived. When he humbled himself on a cross, he made atonement for all of our sins. We must not miss the memo and reject Jesus. If we will receive him, he will save us and adopt us into the family of God.
Sooner or later, I pray that we have a close encounter with God. Perhaps, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it, “The earth is cramm’d with heaven, and every common bush is ablaze with his glory. Only those who take off their shoes, see (God). The rest just sit ‘round and pick blackberries.” We should definitely take off our shoes.
