This Bible Reflection is brought to you by Rev Dr Rachel Mash, Environmental Coordinator of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa (Green Anglicans). She is the chair of the Anglican Communion Environmental Network and co-chair of the Ecumenical Season of Creation movement.

Exodus 3:1-12

Climate change, plastic pollution, biodiversity loss, inequality and wars. How to face up to so many challenges?

In this passage, Moses is being faced with an overwhelming challenge – to rescue his people from Egypt. He feels totally underskilled for the task ahead. And yet, by meeting with God on the mountain, his fears are put to rest and he is empowered to go back down and take up the challenge. During his time on the holy ground of the mountain, he encounters God, and is strengthened spiritually and mentally to take the lead in bringing God’s people to freedom.

Jesus also went up a mountain to pray after times of stress. He did spend a lot of time in synagogues, teaching, healing and debating the interpretation of the Torah. However, we see that for Jesus, spending time with God in nature was also very important – he started his ministry with a 40-day retreat in the wilderness and he often chose to go and pray in nature at particularly stressful times. Having just received news of the brutal murder of his close friend John the Baptist, followed by a marathon ministry day of preaching and feeding an enormous crowd of people, he sends the disciples ahead and goes up a mountain to pray alone (Matthew 14:23). After having a fight with the pharisees and teachers of the law, we read that ‘he went out onto the mountainside to pray alone all night long’ (Luke 6:12). 

Like Moses and Jesus, may we experience the peaceful presence of God in nature, so we can ‘come down the mountain’ and take up the challenges that lie ahead of us.

Questions

Where in nature have you felt closest to God? Why is that place important to you? What changes can you make in your life balance so that you can experience more of the presence of God through Creation?

Prayer