Hello Baysiders! Hope all is well in your souls today. May you walk and talk like Jesus so that others may see God on earth.
Horeb aka the Mountain of God, aka Sinai aka where God appears to Moses in the burning bush aka where the Ten Commandments are given—is a word that literally means “waste.” It’s just like God to appear in a wasteland, a forgotten and neglected place, and make it purposeful and sacred.
This Bible truth gets embodied with the donation we as a church received of the new red chairs for the fellowship halls at Bayside. These chairs were considered waste, stored away in a huge facility, not being utilized, taking up space and forgotten. Then God moved. He moved to connect us to these chairs which we needed as our old chairs were falling apart and ruining the carpet. With the help of a church member and his business connection, the chairs were donated to our church. We now have nice looking, sturdy, and very expensive chairs that are like a gift to us. BOOM. Just like that. No longer are the chairs considered waste. God transformed this secular basic furniture into his sacred holy pieces for the sanctuary with his people. This is God’s power of Horeb.
The transformation of waste with God is a theme in scripture. Think about the morsel of two fish and five pieces of bread that Jesus had when teaching to five thousand people. This was waste. Nothing much to give to the large crowd. I love how a boy had the remnant of food, as if he was the only one to scrap up what was around. Yet Jesus knows the God of Horeb. He takes this morsel waste and multiplies it and feeds everyone in attendance. Waste no more; this waste of crumbs became a feast. When as though it appeared insufficient and hungry stomachs would be heard growling during Jesus’ sermon, God transforms what seemed mundane and minimal into something miraculous and fulfilling. This is God’s power of Horeb. Luke writes, “Then He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude. So they all ate and were filled, and twelve baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them,” Luke 9:16-17. Perhaps we need to be better at looking at our waste? Not mourn over it or be made about it but offer our garbage and the things we think are meaningless to God and wait to watch Him bring forth our own burning bush.
There’s an old saying that says, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” and I believe God is in the recycling business because he loves using what is garbage to recycle it into a valuable asset for his glory. There’s something so powerful about this ability of God that can nourish our faith. The mountain of waste tells us about the transformation God can do in and through us, no matter the waste we find ourselves in. If God can do this for mountains, surely he can do this for us. Are we not of more value than mountains?