When I was in 8th grade, I started a small business of making hand lettered signs. I had decent handwriting then and knew calligraphy. Armed with markers and colored pencils, for $1.00 or so, you could have a custom-made sign.
I like signs.
In the Bible, Gideon asked for signs. He asked for fleece to be wet and then dry a few times. And God provided the request sign. More than once. Eventually, Gideon accepted the signs as True. I always loved that (though the fleece part is a little weird).
In writing this post, I had to do a search to find Gideon’s name and the reference I found said how gracious of God to answer Gideon’s prayer, how weak Gideon’s faith was. Ouch.
But, weak or strong, I like signs. I like that feeling that God has put something somewhere to give me reassurance, encouragement or a direction. A person’s choice of phrase, a song on the radio, a passage in a book I chose to read for “no reason”… A fawn leaping from the woods.
But I have found that sometimes, it wasn’t a sign from God. Sometimes, it’s just fleece and it’s saturation or lack thereof is meaningless.
Maybe God wants me to remember that it’s about him, not the fleece. Don’t make the sign itself the point and lose sight of the faith. Don’t start having more faith in the fleece than in the Shepherd.
Or maybe circumstances change and so the signs change too.
Damn free will.
Or maybe God likes to mess with us once in a while.
I don’t think it’s th
e last one (though I do FEEL like it once in a while week).
I do think I have to resist seeing signs as some sort of Divine dot-to-dot with each one laid out plainly so I can make the next straight line and complete the picture perfectly.
Because perfect is over-rated. And because sometimes the lines are curvy.