I AM SHALL BE INVOKED. And Jesus prophetically proclaimed “I AM” gentle and humble in heart, tenderly calling the overburdened in a too noisy and distracted world to find rest for their souls.

Moses, hearing the voice of God coming from the middle of the bush, said to him, ‘I am to go, then, to the sons of Israel and say to them, “The God of your fathers has sent me to you.” But if they ask me what his name is, what am I to tell them?’ And God said to Moses, ‘I Am who I Am. This’ he added ‘is what you must say to the sons of Israel: “I Am has sent me to you.”’ And God also said to Moses, ‘You are to say to the sons of Israel: “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” This is my name for all time; by this name I shall be invoked for all generations to come. Exodus 3.13

Jesus exclaimed, ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.’ Matthew 11.28-30

Scripture points to I AM’s intending that all humankind shall be free. I AM is gentle and humble. I AM does not intend that heavy burdens be laid upon the lives of his beloved. I AM reveals I AM to humankind upon “holy ground” – which is to say that the presence of I AM makes all created space holy, and so we are to be careful where we trample – and take great care not to miss the loving message of the still small voice.

Someone told me the other day that they longed to be free of their addiction to almost round the clock TV. “I can’t imagine what it would be like to feel that free.” Others are similarly addicted to a whole host of activities, some of them “church” activities. And we live in a society at large that can’t imagine what it would be like to feel free.

Meanwhile the still small voice (more recently translated, Lucy Winkett writes, as the sound of sheer silence) who is not in the earthquake, nor the wind, nor the fire (1 Kings 19) is, simply and eternally and silently ”saying” I AM. And You Are. Free

I’ve been further struck by another passage in Lucy Winkett’s Our Sound is our Wound today:

In a world of constant noise, church communities can teach themselves to be oases of stillness, witnessing to a different reality, one that doesn’t need endless distraction and clamour to communicate it.

I AM calls us precisely to try to imagine what it would be like to stand, or sit, or kneel, or lie down confidently upon “holy ground”,  in silence, in the sure and certain knowledge that just as I AM is free, so are we. God’s yoke is intended to be easy and our burdens light. Imagine that!