| Feature Article – September 2007 |
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We have a love-hate relationship with signs. We need traffic signs to navigate streets and roads, but we complain that they clutter up the landscape. Signs can simplify, and signs can confuse. Signs can guide us on our path or they can be an obstacle in our way.
I recall a sign in Winnipeg at one of the approaches to “Confusion Corner.” It was an attempt to make sense of the tangle of streets by offering a diagram of the intersection. To me, it looked more like a poor diagram of the human heart than a city map!
Signs may even achieve the very opposite of what they are intended to do. I often feel this way about some of those “clever” sayings on signs that are supposed to attract people to God. You’ve seen them, I’m sure – the ones that hope to scare passers-by out of hell and into the church, promising hellfire and damnation if they don’t repent or turn to God or turn away from wickedness. Unfortunately they never attempt to explain what that might mean, or how to do it. They simply pass judgement, often with the implicit assumption that those reading the sign are speeding down the road to perdition. Why not emphasize the greatest of the commandments – to love God and to love one’s neighbour as oneself? After all, the commission given to the Body of Christ is to spread the good news of Christ, not threats, and to live our lives in such a way that people are drawn to God, not repelled by the harshness of our words.
Signs can be somewhat paradoxical. I recently passed a sign – one of those with a message on each side. One side proclaimed, “It generally takes a rude awakening before we can expect a great awakening.” Pardon my Canadianspeak, but…Eh? Is this saying that our moments of illumination typically come only after a time of trial? I immediately thought of John Wesley, the great 18th century English man of God and founder of the Methodist Movement. While listening to a reading at a religious meeting in London, he experienced a sensation which he later described in this way: “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” This experience of the Holy Presence that flooded his being came not after a spiritual beating, but into an open heart responding to the love of God as communicated by the Holy Spirit, during a message emphasizing faith and the grace of God.
One might also infer from the sign’s message that God sends us trials and difficulties in order to “wake us up.” This line of thinking can lead to an even more dangerous one – assuming when things go wrong in a person’s life (or in our own), that either they’ve been disobedient and need a spiritual spanking, or their actions or lifestyle somehow caused the problems that assail them.
Ironically, the reverse side of this same sign offered a benediction: The Lord bless you and keep you, and make his face shine upon you. Now that is a message that does not repel; it attracts. It is a message that is to be proclaimed in word and action by the Body of Christ – a message to the world of God’s love and acceptance. It is that spirit of blessing which is at the heart of the tales of the Good Samaritan, the shepherd who sought the lost sheep, the father welcoming home his prodigal son, and others. If we in the church could reflect that attitude more consistently instead of focusing on negatives, we might begin to see the results in changed lives.
One of the most useful signs I’ve seen was in Saskatoon. Driving down Warman Road after a day of classes at the seminary, I glanced at the parking lot of a strip mall. The sign proclaimed, “Go as far as you can see. When you get there, you will see farther.” Not judgemental, not pushy, not threatening, just gentle good advice. Interpreted in terms of our lives as Christians: don’t expect to have God’s plan unrolled for you all at once – deal with what you can see now and the rest will unfold as it needs to. That advice holds true as well for our dealings with others. We do not need to see the results of the seeds we sow, or the light we spread. It is enough that we, in obedience to God, scatter the seeds of faith and love, and spread the light of Christ whenever and wherever we can. The results are God’s business and may develop over a long time. And like the sign says, once we have done what we can see to do, God may reveal to us new ways of being a light to the world.
So rather than seeing misfortune or difficulty in our lives or someone else’s as a “rude awakening,” let us see it instead as a challenge and an opportunity – an opportunity to put our faith into action as we spread the light as we are able in prayer, word or deed. I suspect that the result will be more “great awakenings” as we see the love of God shed abroad in the hearts of many.