God surrounds us with signs
Friends in the Lord, at the time of Christ, many believed that when the Messiah would come amazing and unusual things would happen. False Messiah’s were promising that they would one day do things, such as part the Jordan River like Joshua did, or bring down the walls of the Jerusalem by a single word.
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Such a sign, the Pharisees were demanding of Jesus: It says that ‘they were looking for a sign from heaven, to test him.’ These demands were not out of faith, but challenge.
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But this was not the intention of Jesus Christ. To him, the whole world was full of signs of God, we can just look around us. St. Paul says that God has made himself known in the beauty of creation: ‘for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made.’
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Some people are always wishing for signs, to know that God is really listening, that he cares about us. But for heaven sakes, let us look at the miracle of the world around us.
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We love summer days and blue skies and flowers, but these cold and snappy winter days also help us in a different way, in a way that makes us strong.
The daylight is getting longer, and we can’t help but feel that spring is not so far off – we see daily the miracle of the sunrise and sunset, the miracle of life in babies, in children, in others; the Lord is present in every person, or he wishes to be.
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To ponder for just a short while, leads us to recognize what a gift our own existence is, and all of this cries out, that God is alive, he has made everything for us; his creation is a daily sign of his love.
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When St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi held a flower in her hand, she felt God’s presence, and she would say to herself: my Good Father has thought from all eternity, to create this flower for me, that I might love him.
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In Ecclesiastes we read: ‘God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done.’ Eccl 3:11
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The sign of a truly religious person is not that he only comes to Church to find God, but that he finds God everywhere. William Barclay will say: ‘For him who has eyes to see and a heart to understand, the daily miracle of night and day, and the splendor of all common things, is sign enough from God.
