He could have chosen the house of the Levite. Or the palace. Or the tent of the Midian high priest. Or He could have chosen Pizza Hut for that matter. However, as we see God doing so many different times in Scripture, God chose somewhere unusual, plain, unsuspected, and just plain ugly. The backside of the desert.
Exodus 3:1 Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
2 And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
Moses was destined to be the future leader of Israel and to lead them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land in the name of the Lord. He was spared from Pharaoh's extermination of Hebrew children and was brought up in safety under Pharaoh's own roof. However, he was not ready to handle the task to which God had called him. Moses' action in killing the Egyptian in Exodus 2:11-12 proved that not only was he unprepared, but we also see in 2:14 that the Hebrews were not ready for him to be their leader. So Moses was led to a place where he would meet God; a place where Moses' past, pedigree, and former position were null and void. He became a shepherd in the backside of the desert. Not exactly a flashy position, but in leading sheep around the wilderness of Horeb, Moses was being prepared to lead a nation into the Promised Land.
So what is the application here? Moses had a job to do; a big job. He had a massive calling on his life that he could not deny or fail to undertake. But God's strategy was not to put an ill-prepared soldier in the breach; there was a preparation period in which God hand-crafted His servant. All of us have hit those sections of life that could most definitely be classified as "backside of desert" equivalents. Whether those seem to be hard times in ministry, sickness, financial difficulties, or having to live in the heat, we will all spend a tour of duty being prepared for what God has for us. We look at situations or locations and call them God-forsaken, but Christian, if you lift up your eyes, you may realize that, like Moses, the place you are standing is holy ground.
