signs

"It's a sign!"

Annie (Meg Ryan), the heroine of the film 'Sleepless in Seattle', is forever coming up with the line. Everything is maybe a sign, so far as she's concerned.

Which is not a million miles removed from the underlying (and mostly implicit) theme of another of those feel-good films, 'Serendipity'.

You can easily get a little bit suspicious of these so-called signs.

Maybe they're just coincidence. Maybe the whole big thing about 'signs' is all in the head.

Maybe.

But maybe not.

I believe in signs. Not in an over-the-top sort of way. At least, I hope not.

But, yes. I believe in signs.

I lost my debit card today. Bad enough at the best of times but in the middle of a global financial crisis it feels a whole load worse.

One moment I had it, the next time I came to use it ... it was gone.

I've long since learned to ask the Lord about such things. Because I hadn't a clue where the thing might be and I didn't want all of the hassle of sorting the whole thing out with the bank.

I mean, they've got enough on their plates at the moment as it is.

So I asked the Lord and set off out to look in all the places where I thought I might have lost it earlier on.

And the first place I went, just as I drew near to the place, this most amazing rainbow sort of suddenly appeared, its base located firmly on the building where I'd thought that I should look. I knew before I even entered in that this was where it was.

A sign.

Not quite 'gold' at the end of the rainbow. But the next best thing. And for the likes of me a reminder of who God is and how he makes that promise of his love and care.

Committed to his people, in the face of all the storms we have to face. Even little (and very local) financial crises such as mine.

It was the only rainbow I saw throughout the day. And as soon as I'd found my card it was gone.

Maybe just coincidence.

But it certainly felt like a sign. The sort of sign I needed in the midst of a whole load of storms that there seem to be at present.

My 'storms' are light, I guess, compared to those that others have to face.

I called on a lady this afternoon who's facing the toughest sort of storm there is to face. Terminally ill, and knowing that it's months at best she's almost certainly got. Or not got.

She's still a young woman in relative terms. And it's hard. Very hard.

But it crossed my mind in seeing her and having the chance to speak and pray with her - it crossed my mind that in a sense she herself is a sign.

To her family, most of all.

The manner in which she's borne this illness over now a good few years - that's been a sign.

The way she's lived, and the way she's dieing - that's a sign as well.

A kind of rainbow from the Lord, dressed up in all the frailty of human flesh.

A sign in the midst of the storms of life that the sun still shines and the Lord still saves.