Um...no. Gideon, like Moses before him, asks how this is going to happen and tries to cloak doubt in humility instead of just doing what he is told. But then after the Lord reassures him "Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man," Gideon agrees.
Nope. Now Gideon asks for a sign. And that holds him for a little while, but soon he's asking for another sign. And another sign.
To sum up, it takes a personal appearance from God, two reassurances that God is for real going to be with him, and three miraculous signs before Gideon is totally confident to do what God asked him to do in the first place. All I want is one of those.
Yes, I'm a sign-chaser. I see signs just about everywhere (isn't life like a work of fiction? doesn't every small thing Mean Something?), to the point that I begin to discount all so-called signs, to the point that I start wondering if I'm discounting too many and maybe some of those are/were actual signs so let's check again, to.... Vicious cycle, anyone?
Last week in my giant set of interviews, two to four people asked a question like this: "I see from your resume you have a strong interest in writing, editing, and theatre. Why are you looking at administrative positions?" It Must Be A Sign.
Signs are a recurring motif in the movie Sleepless in Seattle. They first appear in a conversation the character Annie has with her mother, in which Annie says "Destiny is something we've invented because we can't stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental." Minutes later, when the wedding dress she is trying on rips at a seam, Annie moans, "It's a sign!" The little boy who wants his dad to meet Annie claims a line from her letter is a sign. Annie's friend claims her unconscious repetition of a movie line is a sign.
In one of the last scenes in the movie, it is the evening of Valentine's Day and Annie tells her fiance Walter about this man she knows from the radio, who might be at the top of the Empire State Building waiting for her at that moment. She and Walter break up, then look out the window and see the Empire State Building light up with a giant red heart. "It's a sign," gasps Annie. "Who needed a sign?" Walter replies, seemingly the only one who realizes that "it's a sign" can be code for "now I recognize what I want."
General principle: if you find yourself looking for signs, ask yourself why. To support an action? Just act. To put off taking action, like Gideon was? Just act. To get around to something you don't want to do? Maybe this is a time to confront why you don't want to do it, and whether your reasons are valid. (The Pharisees asked for a sign from Jesus and He came down on them hard for not believing the Word they claimed to be teaching, confronting them for hiding behind a request for a sign when what they meant was "I am fighting against this, against You.")
Sometimes looking for a sign is a way of delaying the part of life where you look truth in the face. Sometimes it's a way of setting somebody else up to take the blame if the consequences of your actions are not up to your expectations.
Do I want clarity? Yes. Should I expect to receive clarity in a particular area of my life when I'm dodging it in others? I don't think so.
I feel very adrift on the topic of employment, but there's a book on my shelf that is the first step in research for my first attempt at a full-length play. I have had this book for five months, have been thinking about reading it for maybe a year longer than that, and the basic kernel of the idea that led me to the book has only been growing in that time, pushing more insistently through various events in my life. Every time I pick up another book instead I feel the twinge of procrastination.
Who needs a sign?
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