The Burning Bush Redux

The wheeze of his own breathing was the only sound inside his spacesuit's helmet. The only sights were the cyclic views of stars, the moon, and the large blue ball of the Earth through his visor as he slowly tumbled in a rapidly decaying orbit. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, uncaring, empty of desires, regrets, or fear. Into the great emptiness where his withered soul waited for release, something undefinable inserted itself. He felt an overwhelming presence, a sense of other, of power, of love.

"Samuel Mayer! Why do you seek to end your life?" A voice spoke from his helmet's speakers. "You are angry with your God even though You allowed one success to follow another and hours away to become days and then weeks away from home and family. The original reasons for your striving for success dwindled until success became its own reason for being. Your family left you because you had already abandoned them. I gave you free will and intelligence, an intelligence unequaled in the universe. You failed to live up to my gifts. You were bitter and vengeful. You were even going to allow your own daughter and young granddaughter to hear and see your death live over a public broadcast."

Sam questioned God, in his arrogance and was reminded of another human who questioned God. He had had to use all manner of visual tricks to make my points to him. People were very primitive in their understanding of the universe at that time. God told him that he was speaking to him with language closer to the real state of things. He was using an invisible ship of primordial energy instead of a burning bush this time.

Samuel was changed by the truth and power and affirmed his new belief in God. The truth of his statement was evident in his voice and it surprised even him.

"Believe in yourself. You will honor me most, by exercising all the powers that your form contains, a brain with which to love and nurture and to think and imagine. Climb that path to understanding and maybe you can join me when we all must rejoin the powers that created us."

Samuel felt a wave of energy pass through him, a force, a gift, pulling the cancer from his body and he knew he was free of it. "Oh, thank God!"

"Thank me by living a live worthy of your potential, worthy of the universe, the mother of us all."