Like Moses in the desert, barefoot before the flame, or Samuel in the temple, I did not know your name. But you knew mine and called it, O God of Abraham: I come now as you draw me to touch the great I Am.
Not to some distant mountain— I would not know the way— yet stones are springing fountains in my mundanest days. I have no mystic vision; no angels fill my sight. You are more deeply hidden, but still I have your light.
Yes, I have walked this desert and fallen in its traps, but guide me, O my shepherd: I have no other map than lines across your body, like veins that show through skin. They lead me to your heartbeat: O, let me enter in.
As you set Moses is the cleft
that he would not in glory burn,
Lord, lay your hand across the rift:
We see you not 'til you have turned.
O burning godhead, hide your light
behind these veils of purple cloth
that swathe your sun in violet night
still dazzling to the earthbound moth.
For no one sees your face and lives
except obliquely, spark by spark,
in flashes such as lightning gives,
transforming all the storm-torn dark.
Give us these glimpses, piece by piece,
within the ordinary day,
the breadcrumbs strewn where heaven leads
to show us heaven on the way.
O heaven, you who walked the earth,
suffuse it still with your own pow'r,
that we who stumble in the dirt
may find you in it, hour by hour.
Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise even Moses made known in the passage about the bush, when he called out ‘Lord, ‘ the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; and he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
O God of all the living,
the unconsuming flame,
O saving and deliv'ring,
bring us to life again.
You drew us through the Red Sea;
now draw us through our death—
but who knows what we shall be
when you restore our breath?
From dust, to dust returning,
then dust is glorified;
not ash in your love's burning,
but endless warmth and light.
But all our life is ashen,
from birth to our decay.
What shall we be, new-fashioned,
within your glorious day?
The bush ablaze yet growing,
its green shoots never burned:
So shall we stand adoring
within your love, O Lord.
And there shall be no sandals
on all that holy ground
where we shall burn like candles
that never shall burn out.
To the tune CONDITOR ALME SIDERUM (“Creator of the Stars of Night”):
O Christ, the burning light of God,
the flame of love that Moses saw,
you heard our sorrows and came down
to make of earth a holy ground.
You saw our suffering and death
and counted every tear we'd wept.
You knew the plight of all th'enslaved
and bound yourself into their chains.
Come, take us from th'enslaver's hand
and lead us into Eden's land.
Though all the desert stretch before,
Lord, walk with us forevermore.
Through nights of waiting, days of thirst,
let living springs from dry stone burst.
Let manna all our hunger fill,
and flames of love burn in us still.
Come, save our bodies and our souls:
As bread from heaven, make us whole.
O Christ, who hears his people's voice,
turn all our sorrows into joys.
O promise made to Abraham,
you saved us by your own I AM.
Let every generation bless
God-with-us in the wilderness!
Moses vor dem brennenden Dornbusch, um 1920, Diözesanmuseum Freising, Inv. D 94117 By Gebhard Fugel – Own work (fotografiert in der Ausstellung “Gebhard Fugel 1863-1939. Von Ravensburg nach Jerusalem”. Galerie Fähre, Altes Kloster, Bad Saulgau, 2014), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32072413
How long, oh Lord, will wander here
the people of your flock?
The way is lost, the path unclear,
by stone and bramble blocked.
Do you look down, or wailing hear,
as we cry out in shock?
Or are you standing, ever near,
unnoticed on the rock?
And when we strike, is it mere stone
that flows, a living spring?
Or one who knows as he is known
and sees our everything?
One who has heard our mortal moan
and watched our faltering
and loves us still, calls us his own,
and comes new life to bring?
You stand beside us, living Lord,
unseen as we rebel:
Oh, melt the hearts we harden toward
the truth that you would tell!
Let us receive your living word,
your voice beside the well,
and flow—your mercy freely poured—
new springs that rise and swell.
Two more figures from the Old Testament, looking beyond their own lifetimes to promises we’re all waiting for.
Moses
It is enough, oh Lord, enough to look,
enough to scale a height and see a dream,
enough for that young shepherd that you took,
that angry prince, not to be what he'd been.
Enough to see the sea stand up and part
and make dry land where fish had held their sway,
or, in the desert, streams from dry stone start,
and wand'ring fires that made the night as day.
You have shown me so much, I need no more
to leave this life behind and be content,
yet there is one thing I still want to see,
one promise, Lord, that you have left in store:
the face I've glimpsed within the meeting tent,
the land where he will reign eternally.
Miriam
There is another sea to cross,
another song to sing
beyond the desert years of loss
and all the griefs they bring,
one wave where we must still be tossed,
while to hope's spar we cling.
Alleluia!
One Egypt lost, another gained:
One sea keeps them apart.
One Pharaoh drowned, another reigned
over us from the start.
One freedom won, ourselves we chained
with shackles in our heart.
Alleluia!
One final pasch shall set us free,
one river yet of blood
shall usher in a jubilee
when cresting in its flood.
Among its flotsam and debris
will bloom a single bud.
Alleluia!
And from that stem, a tide of green
the desert shall transform.
From these floodwaters, dry and clean
we rise again, reborn,
and take in hand the tambourine
and harp, and drum, and horn.
Alleluia!
By Tarnovo literary and art school – Scan: Atanas Boschkov, Julian Tomanov (Aufnahmen): Die bulgarische Malerei : von den Anfängen bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, Recklinghausen : Bongers, 1969, ISBN 3-7647-2060-3, S.159, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3326622
Kate Bluett 
