Signs from God

a time when I found peace during a deluge

I had a thing happen in my life that caused me much anguish and worry. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function. I walked around as though I were in a dream. A really bad dream. 

I took a walk, trying to shake the dream out of my head. I lived on top of a hill, and all the roads led down to a busy street in the valley. As I made my way to the bottom of the hill, the clouds gathered and darkened, and the sun shifted in and out of them. The sky went light, then dark, then light again.

Desperate for reassurance, I asked God for a sign. 

At the bottom of the hill, I watched the cars as they passed, analyzing bumper stickers and license plates. When I reached the busy street and turned onto the sidewalk, I scanned the small business storefronts for meaningful words and logos: there was a picture of Atlas holding up the world; in an office building a couple of doors down, there was a picture of an old tree with deep roots and knotty branches. 

I pondered these images as I walked, then dismissed them as having no particular bearing on my situation. I had pretty much given up on receiving a sign when I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and looked up: there, against the gray blue sky, arcing over a Sonic restaurant, was a rainbow. 

I stood there staring at it, while cars with their windshield wipers wiping entered and exited the parking lot on either side of me.

You didn’t just give me a sign, I thought; you gave me THE sign. 

I walked a little further and asked for another sign to confirm the first one. 

The sky grew darker, and it began to rain harder. Then I heard thunder. I turned around and began my ascent up the hill. On the way, a small wooden sign on a fence caught my eye. On it, these words were painted: 

“I hope you have been enjoying these signs.” 

The next day, I drove down the hill with my family and stopped in front of the house where I had seen the sign: on the fence were hanging several wooden hand-painted signs with different slogans on them, with a note saying “free signs–take one.” I took a sign with the words “no rain, no flowers” painted in blue, with little colorful flowers and dots scattered around it. 

The “no rain, no flowers” sign proved to be accurate: In time, the worry that had oppressed me came to nothing, and some positive things grew out of that particular trial. 

I have often thought back to the rainbow and its meaning. The rainbow is a sign that threatening clouds, ultimately, do not prevail. The sun comes out and brightens the dark sky; the violence subsides. The rainbow appears like a vision, an illusion (as Kermit puts it), evanescent and mysterious, a piece of bright optimism hanging on our darkest fears, reminding us that our trials, like thunderstorms, are finite.

According to the Bible, the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant with mankind after the great flood: He has promised never again to destroy the earth with water. 

Moreover, He promises to be with us when the waters threaten to overwhelm us. 

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isaiah 42:2).