God first appeared (last week) to Moshe as a burning bush. (Actually, the Torah says that first it was an angel in the burning bush, and only later was it God in the bush speaking to Moshe.) Maybe this was a test: What made God decide to speak to him, to choose him as His partner on earth? “Moshe said: I must turn aside to look at this marvelous sight; why doesn’t the bush burn up?” It was Moshe’s ability to turn aside from his regular affairs and notice the marvels around him that earned him a relationship with God.
Moshe could have been too busy to notice. He could have been preoccupied with the task of keeping track of the sheep. It is much easier not to take notice of things. Would any of us have turned aside to notice the burning bush? Our children would have. They would have called to us to come see, and we would have said: Hold on. Let me first finish writing this. And then we would have missed it.
That’s what this week’s parsha is about – how difficult it is to notice God in the world. Moshe comes and tells the people of Israel that God is about to redeem them, but the Torah says that they could not hear him mikotzer ru’ah ume’avodah kasha, “because of a shortness of breath and hard work.” They were too busy to take the time, too stressed to even hear something new. No, no – don’t tell me about that now; I have to get these bricks done.
Such a stressed-out life is one which is indeed short of breath --it is short of the breath that God breathed in to our nostrils when He formed us. It is lacking a sense of the divine daily running through us. We are too busy running to take notice of the fact that we breathe and that, that, too, is a miracle.
But of course the most stubborn of non-seers of the divine in this parsha is Pharaoh. It takes 10 plagues, 10 open displays of God’s control of the universe (10 in your face burning bushes) for him to see it. While Moshe turned towards the marvel of the bush, Pharaoh, the Torah says, during the plague of blood, “turned and went into his house, paying no regard even to this.” He turned away, toward his house, toward his regular human affairs, refusing to allow a sense of the miraculous, the divine, to enter his consciousness.
We don’t usually think to identify with Pharaoh, but are we really so different from him? What daily miracles have we turned away from? (Is a glorious sunset so different from a burning bush?)
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Very powerful, very moving. But such a challenge. The bricks and the sheep and the writing do need to get done; what allows us to do it, and still be sor liros?
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