This rustic relief of Moses hiding his face before the burning bush is all about our rightful demeanour in this season of Lent. It’s typical of Nigerian carved door panels which adorn the entrance to the houses of village chiefs. This one Carole and I saw during our missionary service in Northern Nigeria in the 1980’s. It’s like much of the arresting works of art currently on show at the Nigerian Modernism exhibition at The Tate Modern gallery in London.
There’s something immediate and direct about the image – almost cartoon-like. It captures, not the bush itself, but a man stopped-in-his-tracks, astonished, humbled and ashamed before almighty God. A shepherd tending his flock — going about his daily round – is suddenly transported to the holy-of-holies. The unnerving power of the account in Exodus 3: 1-14, is that God encountered Moses, not in the worship of the temple or a church service, but in-the-course-of an ordinary working day. This is the kind of encounter the poet George Herbert refers to in his phrase ‘Heaven in ordinary’.
The Lord’s self-identity is one of the shortest and most profound statements of all time, ‘I am’. When Moses asked the question ‘Who are you?’ the only answer that was adequate is enshrined in these two words. God was saying to Moses as he says to us today, trust me, I am everything there is and I am everything you need — trust me.
The forty days of Lent, and the provision of our Poustinia at Parcevall Hall, is about shrugging off the unnecessary baggage we acquire. It’s about pairing back the distractions which prevent us standing before the Lord in humility, and in acceptance of what he is calling us to be and to do. And it’s what he wants us to be which is the fundamental calling. It’s what I am that counts – even more than what I do. It’s the ‘I am’, rather than the ‘I do’. As prince Hamlet famously said; ‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’. We are created to be human beings, not human doings. So, the calling of Lent is the discipline of striving to be the Christian people the Lord longs for – rather than justifying our existence with so much busyness and doing.
David Hawkins Lent 2026
