Asking God for signs? Better ask for insight!

Asking God for signs? Better ask for insight!

Mark 8:11-13. No signs will be given

“Lord, give me a sign!” As we celebrate a Happy Valentine’s Day, I can hear my past self praying to God so that He may give me a hint if my then-friend-now-wife liked me (HAHA!)

Popular books and other intelligibilia of pop culture have encouraged us to look at omens, signs, or downright superstitions as a means for the “universe” to communicate with us. If there’s no sign, we become furious at God. Or, we force ourselves to look at some things and fool ourselves into interpreting them as signs.

Forcing God to give us signs could be a form of testing God, a destructive kind of doubt (rather than a healthy constructive form of reasonable doubt, as in, inquiring what God wills).

As I have grown and laughed at my angsty impressionable teenage years, I realize the folly of relying on “signs”. Insights are borne out of one’s internal conditions, and insights reveal themselves to those who have the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual capacity to apprehend them.

Isn’t the pursuit of insight more rewarding than an illusion of asking for a sign? I don’t believe that the prophets were superstitious; they just knew how to reflect more and appropriately direct their attention to the experience that mattered for virtue, and hence, they were able to provide a compelling account of virtuous prophecy.

Can I attribute to a single moment why I fell in love with Mika? I cannot. My love for her is an accumulation of insights, pleasures, and pains which led me to conclude: I cannot imagine my life without her as my partner; and she should be my partner in life.

Thank God for not just giving me a sign. He gave me more; an insight to who I really need and who will journey with me in my life.

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 45: FEBRUARY 14, 2022]