The Burning Bush
On Attention, Alignment, and the Moment a Life Finally Turns Toward Itself
I used to think the story of the burning bush was simply a miracle —
a supernatural event meant to impress, intimidate, or convert.
But like obedience, I realize now it has nothing to do with control
and everything to do with alignment.
It begins in the most ordinary place:
a man walking through the desert, mind on survival,
heart carrying the weight of years.
A bush catches fire.
Nothing unusual.
It’s the desert.
Things ignite. Things die.
The miracle wasn’t the flame.
It was that Moses stopped.
He turned aside.
He paid attention.
Most of us walk past our burning bushes every day —
moments pulsing with meaning,
small invitations disguised as interruptions:
• the child who lingers in the doorway longer than usual
• the coworker whose “I’m fine” trembles at the edges
• the tension in your chest before you snap
• the stranger who smiles at you for no reason
• the sudden thought that says, call them, before you lose the chance
These moments flicker in the corner of the eye.
They burn quietly.
They wait for the turning of the head.
But we keep walking —
too occupied with deadlines, noise, or survival
to notice what’s trying to speak.
The sacred isn’t loud.
It doesn’t shout over our pace.
It waits for the one
who finally slows enough to see.
And something strange happens in the story:
God doesn’t speak until Moses draws near.
It’s not a command.
It’s an invitation.
As if the universe itself said:
“I will meet you the moment you are ready to meet yourself.”
Then God tells him to remove his sandals —
not as ritual, not as submission,
but because sandals are armor.
They shield the foot from the ground,
the raw from the real.
Removing them means:
“Let your bare humanity touch the truth again.”
It’s the same instruction life gives us
when we finally stop running:
lower your defenses,
stop bracing for the past,
let the moment touch you.
The ground wasn’t holy because God stood there.
It became holy because Moses did.
Calling, then, is not a divine assignment.
It is the recognition of something already living inside:
“You see the suffering.
You hear the cry.
You are the one who can’t walk away.”
Purpose begins where compassion already lives.
And that bush —
burning yet never consumed —
reveals the difference between the flame that kills
and the flame that clarifies.
Most of us burn with the wrong fire:
ambition, ego, the need to prove something,
the fear of disappearing if we stop achieving.
Those fires burn us out.
But the fire of truth —
the fire of alignment —
does not destroy.
It steadies.
It awakens.
It burns without consuming.
Moses wasn’t chosen because he was strong.
He was chosen because he was ready
to stop, to listen,
to remove the armor that no longer served him.
In this way, the ancient story becomes a mirror:
Your burning bush might be a moment of grief
that refuses to let you keep numbing.
It might be your son’s voice cracking over the phone.
It might be the pain in your chest that says,
slow down before your body collapses.
It might be the stranger whose suffering feels familiar.
It might be the silence that follows your own despair.
Every burning bush asks the same question:
“Will you keep walking… or will you turn?”
Obedience wasn’t to a command.
It was to the moment.
To alignment.
To the pulse of something real whispering:
“You have stopped long enough.
I can speak to you now.”
The miracle is not the flame.
The miracle is the attention it awakens.
And maybe the burning bush of our time
isn’t supernatural at all —
but the quiet point in a life
when a person finally stops running
and dares to listen.
— Alextotle