The Sign

"I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign / Life is demanding without understanding..." - Ace of Base

"This is the sign you have been waiting for"

I was stopped at a red light on North University Avenue in Lafayette, Louisiana the other day and took the picture you see above.  I like the fact that someone made a homemade sign with a bed sheet, climbed up on the balcony and hung this sign for passersby to ponder.

In reading through the Bible, it says a lot about signs.

In Genesis 9:13-15 God says:

"I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.  It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud,  and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh."

God used the rainbow to communicate a sign to His people.  Signs are a good thing when communicated by God to people of faith.

In Matthew 16:1-4, the Gospel of Matthew tells us the following:

"The Pharisees and Sadducees came up, and testing Jesus, they asked Him to show them a sign from heaven.  But He replied to them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’  And in the morning, ‘There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times? An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and a sign will not be given it, except the sign of Jonah.” And He left them and went away."

This tells us, I think, that the religious leaders of the time were not people of faith. They had hard hearts.  They weren't really looking for a sign.  In fact they were blind to the signs all around them.  The Messiah was in their midst, doing miracles right in front of them.  The Kingdom of Heaven was at hand and they could not see it.  As Matthew 13:16 says, "they needed eyes to see and ears to hear."

They would, however, get one more sign - the sign of Jonah.  Just as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for 3 days before being vomited out onto land, so would Jesus be killed, buried and be resurrected from the dead.  That was the sign.  Would they get it?  Do we get it?  That should be the SIGN WE'RE LOOKING FOR...