Wonder on Display

Part Two of a Three-part series on my foray into the Ottoman empire: Miracles.

Layer 2: Miracles

If you go to Washington DC, how do you know Laura Bush’s inaugural ball dress at the Smithsonian is REALLY the dress she wore and not just some replica or knock-off? And, for that matter, how do I know the Stars and Stripes on dimly-lit display in the National Archives is REALLY the one that Betsy Ross poked her needle-holding fingers on time after time while making her vision for country and freedom come to life in fabric? Truth is, I don’t REALLY know that. I assume, given the location and the way I love a story and how I want to believe the National Archives won’t spin a line of bull, but truthfully, can we really truly know? Assumption, faith, hope, I suppose.

So, as I stood in the dimly-lit room in Topkapi Palace, eyes brimmed with tears and slightly in both doubt, hope, and awe, that’s what I thought of as I gazed at a 5 1/2-foot stick about 1.5” round. Mostly straight but with little bends that come from being a naturally-grown product, before me in a glass case on the wall was a length of wood, a shepherds rod, with a small sign next to it labeled “Moses’s staff.”

My heart shared stories and images of him holding it, probably not looking like Charlton Heston, but maybe so. I saw him hiding out in the desert with it for many sheep-watching years and then dropping it to the ground while a burning-Bush voice commanded him to do so. I saw it turning into a snake, him grabbing the snake by the tail, and it turning into a rod again.

Perhaps it was this rod that, after he’d talked with Pharaoh and told him to let God’s people go out of captivity in Egypt, struck the water of the Nile River and turned it into blood. Maybe this rod was in his hand when he tapped it here and caused locusts or frogs or any of the other 10 plagues to absorb the land, terrorize the leaders, and get millions of Hebrews eventually freed from slavery.

I wondered if this is the staff he held firm in faith, raising it above his head while wind whipped through his curly beard, while God parted the Red Sea, allowing His people to escape Egypt and captivity on dry land. Or, perhaps, if it was the one Moses used to, in anger, strike the rock and cause a spring to shoot forth in the desert while he and the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years waiting for God to provide them a promised home.

How can we know Laura Bush wore the dress at the Smithsonian or if Betsy Ross really sewed that exactly red, white, and blue flag that’s on display in Washington? Truth is, we can’t. But someone in charge of putting it in a museum did a lot of work to authenticate those things and they have paperwork to prove it is what they say it is, complete with a long line of history. The same is true, then, for this item, too. Still a Missouri Show-Me State Skeptic, I wonder if this can possibly be the staff Moses held 3400 years ago. What if it isn’t? Oh, but my friends, what if it is? The stories it could tell about faith and miracles and fear and triumph and belief and wonder and God’s.Mighty.Mind-blowing seek-you-in-the-desert, call-you-by-name, I-see-more-in-you-than-you-see-in-yourself, burning bush power. And, that, my friends, is why I stood in a dimly lit room with tears in my brimming eyes and stood breathless in front of a piece of wood behind a security-guarded glass in awe, might and wonder.

Would I come back to Turkey as my first vacation and cuisine destination? Probably not because there are lots of places to wander and see. Would I love to stand there again in the palace museum and join centuries of respect and wonder and faith? Absolutely. And I’d take you with me.

It makes me wonder: Rebecca, what’s your burning Bush? What’s your staff? What’s in your hand? What do you have an invitation to throw down and have God use in whatever miraculous way he wants to use?

Hmmmm.

Friends… what’s in your hand?