Signs from God

The proverbial "sign from God" is so oft used that it can't not but be misused. I think there's a temptation to call something a "sign" because identifying the hand of God is gratifying. We usually associate this type of special appearance of God with random natural occurences that connect in an obvious way with the topic of conversation or with the presenting dillema. For example, I noted that in my first blog on the subject of identifying God in our world two albino pigeons appeared on the street below. These connections are irrational but often times very obvious. For me, the temptation was to conclude: there you have it, God is encouraging me to continue thinking and writing about this topic by sending me a little encouragement in the form of a rare (at least for me) phenomenon: two albino pigeons. It's not that I don't think God gives us "signs." It's that the meaning is derived from the subjective experience and is therefore ungrounded. As I look around my desk, I see a college loan bill. Wow. That could be a sign from God that I should take care of my bills. You could make a sign out of everything. Even the rarity of the event doesn't really clinch the deal. In any given situation, there are countless irreplicable events occuring, each of which, if noticed, might give rise to some conclusion that a sign had been given. A spider just happens to be occupying 1/1,000,000,000 of the space of your wallpaper and winds up sitting on your calender, making it a sign from God that November 20th is the day you should... How do you know if it's a sign from God or not?

I don't think you can know. But you can believe that God is in control of all things, leaving chance out of the picture. Maybe God just enjoys drawing rare phenomenon to our attention at strategic moments without any particular reason. So, I guess my conclusion is you can beleive God is giving you a sign. You just can't know what the sign signifies.