The third week of our journey was up to hot Egypt. We could title that week either "Standing Outside the Fire"or as our friend that lives there as a hospital volunteer calls it "Hairdryer in your Eyeballs". This episode is dedicated to processing the events at Sinai just from last Sunday, Aug7- Tuesday, Aug9 2022.
I. Bush Fire:
George McDonald on Divine Burning: "He will shake heaven and earth, that only the unshakeable may remain: He is a consuming fire, that only that which cannot be consumed may stand forth eternal....He will have purity...the fire will go on burning in us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to its force, not with pain and consuming but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God." (1).
Are you still with me? St. Catherine's Monastery in the south of Sinai peninsula is the oldest continuously inhabited monastery in the world. It was built in 548 during the reign of Emperor Justinian (the official name of it is worth the click on the above link). The only human inhabitant we saw was a gatekeeper who kept out ill dressed tourists*. The main attraction inside the walls is actually a bush. Tradition says that this is The Bush, the burning bush of Moses's first meeting with God. It is still living and green and watered from the well said to be the "Well of Girls" where Moses met the girl he would marry. I noticed that the bush, still vivaciously alive is not charred or brittle or most notably, dead. Even though God is a consuming fire, whatever is pure and of Him will remain. ( Hebrews 12:29)
Also at St. Catherine's Monastery is a library, the oldest continually operating library in the world and home of one of the oldest original and complete manuscripts of the Bible, the Codex Sinaiticus (4th century) and another in Syriac. These ancient documents testify to the veracity and accuracy of the Bible over 1,000's of years. They were not on public display sadly. The monks are very private about their books and the Codex has been mostly annexed to the British Museum in London anyways. (Thank you, Indiana Jones) But we know that what is true will remain ultimately.
II. Rocks:
There are very unique rocks in the vicinity of Mt. Sinai and the Burning Bush. There is a burning bush leaf-like print that is indelibly tattooed in the rocks. It is like a testimony in stone of the Holy God-Trodden place. You can almost hear them crying out with organic graffiti "Remember: God was here". Even when the rocks are hammered and split apart, the print is there within it's essence.
Just think: stone tablets of the covenant that God gave to Moses and His people were written on this mountain. But because Law never penetrates the human heart, only love does, when the base people betrayed their Liberator- Lover God and broke his heart, those stone tablets were broken too. And then Moses went up again and got another hand written copy of the Law for God's people. My knees were sore from one trip down the 750 stairs. Good thing I didn't have to go right back up again. **
Can you see the wee lad in the lead running like a hobbit down the mountain?
III. Mountain:
We reached the end of the road at 12:30 a.m. and met up with our Bedouin guided camel journey. The kids went first and second up on the giant animal's backs with sadly teeny tiny saddles. We rode tall through the star strewn darkness. There are no sweet crickets in the desert. It was so very quiet. For two hours we rode up the rocky trail. Occasionally we'd round a corner that exposed a military grade LED streetlight somewhere far below. In the darkness with zero trees, zero plant life, it was stark. After 2 hours we had to walk. The rocky upward stacks of rocks was illuminated only by our handheld devices. It was not built by the same people who engineered the pyramids lets just say. The kids again were leading the way further up and further in. We reached the summit in plenty of time to watch the 5am sunrise. We read Exodus 19 and 20. How did we get up here if all that is true? Then we read Ephesians 2 about how Christ's purpose is to bring us who were far away and had no business in the presence of a Holy God near to the Father and make us one.
IV. Dryness:
George McDonald has much to say about the Divine Burning and also about spiritual dryness.
"That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to Him, 'Thou art my refuge'" (1).
In the Sinai, we constantly sought refuge in the shade and water bottles. When we are stripped bare of every last pretense, we only have faith that God is our refuge or we have desolation. I am left amazed at the realization that it is perhaps in very dry and barren places, the magnanimous mountains of dryness that a holy ember of faith could create prime conditions for a wild fire. There is nothing else to be consumed by a blaze out here though. The red tipped cigarette held by the man with the camel isn't going to hurt anything because there is nothing for it to consume aside from his lungs. Dryness and desolation- why did God chose this place to make Himself known instead of that lovely lush end of the very same Great Rift Valley in Kenya? We hiked down and talked about Egypt in the Bible and the complex relationship it represents with God's people and how Jesus was a child there too for a purpose.
It makes me think of a Rich Mullins song(as much of life does) "He was a boy like I was once, was he a boy like me? I grew up around [Tennessee] he grew up around Galilee..." Back home in green Chattanooga, rain has been so voluminous that our grass grew 10 feet and my porch pillows grew mildew. Guess how I get rid of that? Blazing sunshine. The light and the heat is purifying. I'm so thankful for green, trees, rain, the gentle hills of East Tennessee. And I am also thankful for the desert wilderness of rocks and heat and mountains you wouldn't believe they are so stunning. But I do hope you believe, and especially what happened on that mountain and how God came to not just give a law, but to be with His people particularly in that very dry and desolate place. He still does that.
*see photo. One of us, clothed persistently in athletic shorts had to wrap a rental covering over his bare knees in order to enter. Oddly enough, we were not asked to remove shoes.
** Wonder upon wonder! Michael had knee surgery in April and was healed up enough to make this trek!
1. C.S. Lewis George MacDonald: an Anthology 365 readings p.1, 2
