The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in flames of fire from within a bush . . . “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Exodus 3:2, 5 (NIV)

It’s funny. In all of my years of life and ministry, I don’t know that I have ever had what I would call a real “burning bush experience.” Just a few weekends ago, however, I had at least two.

The first one happened, of all places, in a Hardee’s restaurant in Cumberland, Kentucky. It was a Saturday morning, and the Acts 1:8 Council from our church in Wellford, South Carolina, was on a discovery trip to eastern Kentucky. We were hoping to gain a sense of where God was working and moving in Appalachia so that we might discern if He wanted us to join Him in what he was doing there. Little did we know that our first experience of God would take place right alongside a made-from-scratch sausage biscuit, but it did, and it came in the form of a giant of a man named Mike.

Mike was standing in line ahead of us when we walked into Hardee’s. I saw him and took special note of him immediately, not because I was so spiritually sensitive but simply because it was impossible to overlook him. Several of us had seen the movie, “The Blind Side,” so it may not surprise you that one of our team members quickly dubbed this guy “Big Mike.” He was huge. Mike came up to us as we were eating our breakfast and introduced himself. He had seen us pull up in our church van and, apparently, he was on something of a mission himself. Mike was a believer and a member of a Pentecostal church that was located, in his words, in one of the nearby “hollers.”

After a bit of small talk about who we were and where we were from, Mike asked us a question that took me by surprise. He said, “Will y’all have any room in the back of your van on the way home?” Continue reading ‘Parables of Life: Burning Bushes’