Shoes Off - Exodus 3: 4-5

I’m going to try something a little bit different because I am starting a school program in a couple of weeks that is going to be pretty time and energy intensive for the next 1-2 years, but I don’t want to give this up, even though I have not been as vigilant with it as I should have been. I’ve been having some health problems as well as just being mentally drained in general with a lot of family drama. Anyway, all this is to say that I’m going to do something where I only spend about 30 minutes doing an entry, but trying to do it more consistently because this scripture study is very important to me. With that being said though, I do recognize that I get overwhelmed with all the information that I want to study and then include because I want my study to be super comprehensive but there is just SO much information at this point that it is very daunting looking at spending several hours on an entry every day. Anyway, all this is to say that what my plan is moving forward is to spend around 30 minutes a day doing an entry but trying to do one mostly every day.

3:4-5 - There is an anomaly in nature that Moses wants to go check out, and as he gets closer to this “burning” bush, “God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.” I’ve heard somewhere once, I don’t remember where exactly, but when you hear the Spirit call your own personal name it is an incredible experience. I kind of experienced that once and it was powerful, but it was very short. Maybe this is a reason why the scriptures and the church and ordinances are so heavy on using names as a part of it, because names are powerful? I know that in the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” the concept of names and using them correctly is a central theme. I’ve also heard that most people like hearing their own names being said by others, I personally hate it, so that’s just another thing that I don’t understand that most other people do. But God called Moses, and he answered.

Interestingly, God’s next step is to command Moses “Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” Again, this is something else that never really made sense to me, the only thing that I could think is that Moses is currently in the mountains, a relatively rough geography. Anciently, having a foot injury could quickly lead to disability or even death so I would imagine that footwear and protection was very important to ancient people so Moses would have been reluctant to remove his shoes and subject his bare feet to sharp rocks, thorns, or even animals that could injure his feet. It’s like when you read about Europe in WWII, people could survive all these horrific conditions but the moment that their shoes were useless, that was the known death sentence, just goes to show exactly how much faith Moses must have had to actually risk his foot health.

In the article on this chapter from gospeldoctrine.com, the author notes, “This is Moses’ first temple experience,” which brings up a good point and might remind some of the old school temple endowment. TB explains that the ground is holy “Because if God is there, its holy… As we’ll find out in later parts of the Torah, holiness was something that could be transmitted from person to person, or person to object, or object to object… It would have been tragic had the holiness of the dirt surrounding the Burning Bush been transferred to Moses’ sandals, and then wherever he walked those sandals would have possibly transmitted holiness to whatever they touched.”

Just reflecting on how I would feel looking at a “burning bush” and hearing the voice of God, being told to take off my shoes would have probably seemed random, but you take off your shoes in someone’s house as respect so that you don’t bring dirt into their house, maybe this was the same thing, God wanted to make a point that this experience was not simply hearing a voice on a mountain, but God was personally interacting with him. By removing his shoes, he would have been exposing a soft, vulnerable part of his body to the harsh reality of nature. The sensations felt in his feet alone would have moved his mind from a comfortable train of thought, to something unexpected. I was out of town last week and I cut the soft part of the bottom of my foot on a rock at the beach and it was/is incredibly painful. Those feelings make me acutely aware of my surroundings and puts me more in the thought process of connecting mind and body, paying close attention. Maybe it wasn’t just the “holy ground” concept that God wanted Moses to experience, but maybe this was also a way to get Moses’ mind to recognize that this was a completely new and critically important event.