Give Me a Sign
How many times have I uttered that prayer? Don’t tell me. I’m embarrassed to know the total.
I hope I’m not alone in this desperate and repetitive plea. Wouldn’t it be nice for the sign to literally appear? Even just once? I’m talking about walking down the street, asking God for a sign and tripping over a large rectangular piece of metal that has suddenly begun to squeeze upward from the ground I’m walking on. As I turn to see what I tripped over, I’m paralyzed watching God bring my sign to tangible life, rising…
rising…
RISING
above my head to the height of the nearby McDonald’s arches. No, a little bit higher than the arches until there’s no mistaking my sign for what it is: the literal sign I had begged for with written assurance of the presence of God, of the promise Christ brought, that the hope that was there from the beginning remains.
That would be nice. Signs for everyone everywhere. We would never be confused or wonder or fear we were alone. We would have hundreds of thousands of giant metal reminders.
And then today I read this: “For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified…” (I Cor. 22-23). Paul can be so annoying.
I kept reading and decided one point he’s conveying is that if I spend my days waiting for signs that spring forth from the earth, I will miss the reality and beauty that He is actually already here in all things because of Christ, because of the Holy Spirit. Omnipresence does not necessitate skywriting. Though skywriting would also be very convenient…
I totally understand. I’m the same way. I even had a conversation with Allen about it a few weeks ago! Sometimes it’s just difficult to figure out what the right decision is…the right path…the one that God wants…all this to say, I hear ya.
I’m so with you on this one! ExCEPT I used to PS: my prayerful pleas for Divine Signage with demands they be coupled and appear with orchestral harps and a heavenly choir in universal surround sound. Paul used to greatly annoy me so I figured the heavenly choir bit would annoy him back from his current celestialperch: if he had been living and walking amongst the Victorians his epistle to them would have been far dire to his missive to the Colossians. (I used to think the Corinthians were Paul’s Pet Project until I read his special words to the Colossians, bless! 🙂 xx
Great post. Also, an old Pastor of mine related the following anecdote to me a while back.
He was buying shoes and the sales assistant (SA) saw on his credit card that his prefix wasn’t “Mr” it was “Rev”. So the SA said, “You know, if I got a clear sign that jesus was real then I’d believe. If Jesus came and stood right in front of me, then I’d believe he existed.”
My old Pastor replied, “Well, he did come and stand in front of people. they didn’t believe even then and nailed him to a cross.”
I reckon that even if we did get the clear as day directional signage, we still wouldn’t obey it half the time. Ah, the joys of being a sinner, eh?
Oh, I love that story! Thanks for sharing it.