God shows up in burning bushes. The question is whether we turn aside. Most of us are too busy to notice.

In this letter

- What a burning bush looks like in modern life — interruption, disruption, the thing in your path

- Why the voice waited for Moses to turn, and what that means for us

- The three verbs of divine awareness as comfort for the unheard

- I have seen, I have heard, I know — for everyone who has felt unseen

- Sandals off as bodily response, not just mental agreement

- The honest question — where is God asking for your sandals?

Scripture

- Exodus 3:5-7

The question to sit with

Where do you feel unseen right now? And where in your life does God need your sandals off — not just your mind agreeing, but your body bowing?

Coming tomorrow | The Whole Letter. The name.

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The bush burns and is not consumed. The voice says Moses's name twice. The verbs change everything — I have seen, I have heard, I know.

In this letter

- Walking through the encounter slow

- The Hebrew seneh (H5572) — the thorny bramble bush

- The Angel of the Lord, and the question of pre-incarnation Christ

- Moses's choice to turn aside, and why the voice waited

- Hineni (H2009) — Here I am, full availability

- Qodesh (H6944) — holy ground

- The three verbs of divine awareness — raah, shama, yada

- I have come down — the gospel in one sentence

Scripture

- Exodus 3:1-10

Hebrew word studies

- seneh (סְנֶה, Strong's H5572) — the thorny bramble bush

- hineni (הִנֵּנִי, H2009) — Here I am. Available. Ready.

- qodesh (קֹדֶשׁ, H6944) — holy, set apart

- raah (רָאָה, H7200) — to see, perceive

- shama (שָׁמַע, H8085) — to hear, listen responsively

- yada (יָדַע, H3045) — to know intimately

Coming tomorrow | The Address. Are you noticing the bush?

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Moses had three lives. One ended at forty. The next ended at eighty. The third was about to start in a wilderness he had stopped expecting anything from.

In this letter

- The traditional Mosaic authorship of the Torah

- Moses the prince of Egypt — the basket in the reeds, Pharaoh's house

- The killing of the Egyptian and the flight to Midian

- Moses the fugitive — forty years tending Jethro's sheep, married, settled, done

- Numbers 12:3 — Moses as anav, the humblest man on earth

- Why God called the eighty-year-old, not the forty-year-old

Scripture

- Exodus 2 (referenced)

- Numbers 12:3

- Acts 7:23-29 (Stephen's retelling, referenced)

Coming tomorrow | The Story. The encounter at the bush, slow.

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A fugitive shepherd on the back of the desert. A bush that burns and is not consumed. A voice that says his name twice. The day Moses's real life began.

In this letter

- Setting the scene — Moses at eighty, tending Jethro's flock in Midian

- A slow read of Exodus 3:1-8 (NKJV)

- The bush — seneh, the scraggly bramble

- Why God put the strange thing in Moses's path and then waited

- The doubled name as summons (Abraham, Samuel, Saul)

- Here I am — Moses's one-word answer

- Sandals off, holy ground

Scripture

- Exodus 3:1-8

Coming tomorrow | The Sender. The man with three lives.

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The compassion of the father in Luke 15 is not polite. It is gut-level. Visceral. Bowels-deep. One Greek word changes how you read the whole chapter. Today we hear the whole letter.

In this letter

- The opening claim — Luke 15 is one chapter, three parables, one answer

- The party as the point of all three parables

- The Greek splanchnizomai (G4697) — gut-level compassion

- Where else this word shows up in the Gospels — Jesus and the crowds, the widow of Nain, the good Samaritan

- The father runs — and what running meant in the ancient world

- The older brother — the second lost son

- Why the chapter ends without resolution

- A direct word for the prodigal, the older brother, and the one who does not yet know the Father

Scripture

- Luke 15 (full)

- Matthew 9:36, Luke 7:13, Luke 10:33 (other uses of splanchnizomai)

Greek word studies

- splanchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι, Strong's G4697) — to be moved in the bowels, gut-level compassion

- diaskorpizō (διασκορπίζω, G1287) — carried from Wednesday

Next week's letter | Exodus 3 — The Bush That Wouldn't Burn Up.

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The parable does not end at the party. There is a second son. He stayed. He worked. He kept the rules. And he is also lost. Most of us are him.

In this letter

- The older brother's complaint, line by line

- This son of yours — the language of disowning

- The father's three sentences in response — Son, you are always with me. All that I have is yours. He is your brother.

- The two ways to be lost — by leaving, and by staying

- Why Jesus stops the story mid-conversation

- The Pharisees as the older brother

- The church person as the older brother

Scripture

- Luke 15:25-32

The question to sit with

Are you in the far country, hoping to come home? Or are you in the field, resenting the grace given to people who did not work for it?

Coming tomorrow | The Whole Letter. The Greek word that carries the chapter.

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A son who effectively wished his father dead. A father who ran through the village to embrace him. A homecoming you've heard a hundred times — slowed down so you can see what the original hearers saw.

In this letter

- Why asking for the inheritance early was unthinkable in the ancient Near East

- The Greek diaskorpizō (G1287) — to scatter, squander

- The pigs and what they meant to a Jewish hearer

- Coming to himself — the turning point in the pig pen

- The rehearsed speech

- The father watching, seeing, having compassion, running, kissing

- Splanchnizomai (G4697) — the gut-level compassion

- Why dignified men did not run, and why the father ran anyway

- The robe, the ring, the sandals, the fatted calf — what each one meant culturally

Scripture

- Luke 15:11-24

Greek word studies

- diaskorpizō (διασκορπίζω, Strong's G1287) — to scatter, squander, throw in every direction. What a farmer does with seed, what the prodigal does with his inheritance.

- splanchnizomai (σπλαγχνίζομαι, Strong's G4697) — to be moved in the bowels. Gut-level, body-deep compassion. The deepest physical word for compassion in the New Testament.

Coming tomorrow | The Address. The other son. The brother who stayed.

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Luke was a doctor. A Greek. The only Gentile writer in the New Testament, and the only Gospel writer who gives us the full trilogy of lost-and-found parables.

In this letter

- Luke the man — physician, Gentile, companion of Paul (Col 4:14, 2 Tim 4:11, Phlm 24)

- The literary care of Luke's Gospel — preface, eyewitnesses, an orderly account

- Theophilus and Luke's intended audience

- Luke's particular concerns — outsiders, the poor, women, Samaritans, tax collectors

- Why all three parables only exist together in Luke

- The setting of Luke 15 — Jesus at the table with tax collectors and sinners

Scripture

- Colossians 4:14

- 2 Timothy 4:11

- Philemon 24

- Luke 1:1-4

- Luke 15:1-3

Coming tomorrow | The Story. The third parable, slow.

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