Life is such a wonderful experience. It is great to be alive. It leaves us often asking for more. There is a consciousness among men that there is a lot more to life than what we see or experience and we want to know. It is like holding the end of a beautiful piece of string and we want to know where it started and where it will end. We want to see the whole ball of yarn it is a part of. We look for signs of what else lies ahead, what lies in store for us.
Man has always looked for signs of what is life really all about. Often, we just want to have more of what we already have: more food, more clothes, more material goods and possessions, more pleasures, more power, more fame, more success. Christ exasperation, I guess, from our missing the whole point of human existence. Christ wants us to level up. Like he said on many occasions: “I can multiply the loaves again and change the water into wine again but you will be hungry again. I will give bread to eat and wine to drink and you will never be hungry again.”
Why wish just to have more pleasures when in accepting your pain and sufferings you can transform these into joys? Why wish just for more power and fame for yourself alone when in loving and serving others you channel the power of love into a community where fame means embracing everyone as a brother or a sister? Why be fearful of death when in facing it and looking it in the eye together with Christ, you can come into life everlasting?
I ask for no sign except for the sign of knowing that I am with Christ every step of the way, the sign that the string I hold is attached to his rope, that the dreams and hope that I nurture are but signs of the continuing work of Christ in me.
When the crowds were increasing, Jesus began to say, “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. For just as Jonah became a sign to the people of Nineveh, so the Son of Man will be to this generation.
Luke 11:29-32