Each Friday through August Pastor Harry will be writing on Growing the Beloved Community to stimulate ideas and discussion on how we might live into this vision.

Dear Saints in Santa Fe and other far-off places:

Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ, the new Moses, who welcomed children into his arms.

Moses looked, and his life changed right then and there.

Before he noticed the burning bush, Moses’ life was caught up in the system of empire, from his earliest moments of life being saved in a basket on the Nile, to growing up in the privileged halls of Pharoah with slavery all around him, until the day he killed an overseer who was abusing a slave.  He fled and eventually found himself tending sheep in the wilderness.

It was then he looked.  Scripture said, “he turned aside” which literally means to stop what you are doing and give your attention to something else.

There are burning bushes all over the world, the Rev. Traci Blackmon said in a sermon I heard at the Wild Goose Festival last month.  An African American preacher and a United Church of Christ leader and pastor, she wondered how often we don’t stop, turn aside, to see whether a bush is being consumed.  She then went on, in a rising crescendo, to list people and places, today’s burning bushes, that require our undivided attention.

What are your burning bushes?  What are the burning bushes in our culture and community?

For me, children and youth immediately come to mind.  As I mentioned in an earlier Letter to the Saints, new opportunities arose in June to enhance our ministry to parents and their children, whether they are enrolled in our Child Development Center (CDC) or part of our church school.  We could now create an Infant Care Center to meet a huge need in our community as well as enhance and expand our ministry to children and youth.  After a thorough search of our building, the third floor was the only location that would work.  The wall would be removed between the Moore Conference Room and Youth Room for the Infant Care Center, and across the hall a new door would connect the former Business office and Volunteer Room to create space for our children and youth.  It would be one project to meet the needs of all.

Many meetings were held with those who would be affected by this project.  A burning bush stood right before us and there was excitement in addressing an overwhelming need in our community.  But soon objections and concerns arose which eventually prompted our CDC Director Anne Liley and me to say we just can’t go forward.  Not with all we’re hearing.  The stress and pressure were simply too much.  It was a hard call but, unfortunately, no different than the many times through the years that new ideas fall to the floor because loud objections arise.

Then something happened.  The bush kept burning.  Since we made that decision a few days ago, many voices have risen to support the project.  We love our children and youth, they said.  We want to support our young families, all of them, no matter what it takes.  All these children are our children.  Two nights ago, session unanimously reaffirmed its commitment to this project and pledges its full support to make it happen.

Burning bushes don’t get consumed.  Moses found that out as God chose him to lead the people to freedom from empire to the Promised Land.  God is the one who frees us, this story tells us, the one who starts the blaze.  We just need to look, turn aside, and give these burning bushes our undivided attention.

Grace and peace,

Harry