Moses led his people out of slavery, across a desert, back to the land where their ancestors had lived. But first he stood on the edge of the desert at the bottom of a mountain and heard God speak to him.

He might have been told to climb the mountain to see the route they would take, but at the start of his life's work he saw at the bottom of this mountain a bush burning without being destroyed. He went to investigate and God told him to listen.

Before Moses could plan strategically he had to converse with God intimately. His life was a mixture of greatness and of weakness, of success and of failure, a life in which God intervened repeatedly to put him back on course. Many times he was frustrated and angry because the big picture did not seem to be developing the way he thought it should. Moses needed to learn to obey God in each small picture.

He ended his life on another mountain with a panoramic view of the land his people were about to enter. In the following pages we might see the big picture of the world explained in terms of poverty or sex or power, but these are the background to our walk with God.

We need to start and stay with the small picture- while never ignoring the big one. We need to stand alone on the edge of the desert with God and ask him what he would have us do, and then we need his help to do just that.