The Hissing Bush

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The pre-dawn light left much to the imagination as I headed to work, trudging the two miles for my daily appointment with the 6:26 train. Headphones turned up, I heard little else. Until, that is, a bush suddenly — incredibly — hissed and snarled so loudly at me that it broke me mid-stride as I leaped away. The hissing, snarling, fierce bush spun me half around. I stared, disbelieving. Was there a mountain lion or bobcat lying in wait for me, hidden by the green growth?

I retreated, yanking the earphones out. What could this mean?

I hastened on my way, puzzled, and a bit shaken by the bush’s exploding ruckus. Where had I heard that ungodly sound before? Then I recalled — outside my back door one night, I exited to deposit garbage in the trash can. I had evoked that same hiss by shocking an opossum in mid-stride, rummaging for his dinner.

No, I had not discovered the burning, speaking bush that had appeared to Moses with the voice of God. Instead, I had been ambushed by an aroused and angry opossum, which I had interrupted from a deep slumber within the bush.

I thought back to an interaction with another opossum I had several weeks ago, while undertaking the same early morning walk to the train. I had come across an opossum, wounded, in the road, having been struck by a car. Largely incapacitated, he remained standing as best he could, staggering, jaw dislocated and face distorted from the impact with the car. I felt helpless, wondering what I should do.

At that moment, a pickup truck stopped. Out bounded a landscape worker on his way to the day’s first appointment. He asked about the condition of the unlucky marsupial. I drew a blank, over both his concern for the creature and his presumption that I should have a diagnosis.

Without hesitation, he carefully lifted the animal by the tail with one hand and gently cradled its chest with the other, as if this were his daily routine. He placed it, lovingly and out of harm’s way, by the trunk of a large palm tree. There, gravely wounded, it unsuccessfully attempted to climb the tree for protection.

Disappointed over my own indecision and lack of response, I had hurried onward toward my train, wondering all the while at the worker who had given his best to help the animal, for which I had no solution or comfort.

The lives of two opossums had invaded mine on two distinct and separate occasions. Several weeks ago, I had briefly met a dying opossum in the street for which I had no remedy. And today, the opossum-bearing bush had hissed angrily, scolding me, I imagined, over the demise of his brother. Their dying whimper and angry hiss are poor prophetic utterances compared with the awesome burning bush and the voice that spoke to Moses.

What do we make of such things? God had punctuated my workaday world with Mystery. If I could be so numb in understanding the workings of the world around me, how out of touch might I be to the world of people, and in responding to His concerns for each of us?

Life’s occurrences  can seem mundane. But beneath, there is that Mystery – the message within, if we pause long enough to search it out. The events are markers, meant for our ears to hear.