burning bushes

I love autumn!  The break in humidity.  Cool mornings. Soup. Return to routines. Pumpkins and hot apple cider.  And here in Asheville the riot of color - golds and reds - that marks this season and bring the tourists flocking in.

Today I drove past a tree that was so flaming red that it was almost unbelievable.  I wanted to stop and take a picture.  But I was in a hurry.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes about reverence.  

"Reverence requires a certain pace.  It requires a wilingness to take detours, even side trips, which are not part of the original plan. I can stop what I am doing long enough to see where I am, who I am there with, and how awesome the place is.  I can flag one more gate to heaven - one more patch of ordinary earth with ladder marks on it - where the divine traffic is heavy when I notice it and even when I do not.  I can see it for once, instead of walking right past it maybe even setting a stone or saying a blessing before I move on to wherever I am due next." 


Taylor talks about Moses having this kind of reverence.  Exodus 3 says
Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. ² There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. ³ So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” And Moses said, “Here I am.” ⁴ When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”

Moses' willingness to stop and notice the burning bush led to him having an unexpected experience with God and started him on a life changing path.   How many burning bushes/flaming trees have I rushed past this week.  How many God encounters have I breezed over?

Taylor quotes one of the wise women in Alice Walker's book The Color Purple.  "I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

This makes me smile.  It is not the picture I have of God, but I think it is a good reminder to be on the lookout for those beautiful, flaming red, autumn trees.