“But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being. Does not the ear test words as the palate tastes food? Is wisdom with the aged, and understanding in length of days? “With God are wisdom and strength;” Job 12:7-13

{“What is that sound?” a woman visiting our nature center asked. “It’s the frogs trilling for a mate,” Patti, the naturalist, explained. “We have a pair in the science room. But they’ve been together for so long, they no longer sing to each other.” The woman nodded sympathetically. “The trill is gone.”} (KathyJo Townson)

Job says “With G-d are wisdom and strength…” I believe the older I get the more I realize how true this statement is. For most of his life, my father was never short on wisdom and advice. For most of my life I was unwise not to heed it. It is true, the older we get, the wiser our parents and other elders seem to become. The old adage is also true, if I had known then, what I know now, things could have been so much easier in my life. But, of course, just think of the things we learn through the struggles we encounter. This is part of what makes life so thrilling, if not enthralling and invigorating.

Think of the lessons we can determine from Job’s encounter with loss, and his struggle to understand why it all happened. While his friends seem to try to convince him that there must have been many things that he did wrong, and so he needs to confess his sins to G-d, Job stands firm that he believes he has been dealt a bad hand from G-d. In the end, though, Job will admit “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:2, 6) When we repent of our sins, and when we come to our senses to realize how “wise” our elders really are, there is always room for admitting that we do not know everything. Understanding of the ways of the world can be very hard. The same is true with understanding the ways of G-d. But when we repent of our sins before G-d, and realize how wise is the wisdom of G-d, we increase in knowledge, and see better the ways of Kingdom living. 

Pastor Dave

“Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household. Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.” John 4:46-54

{“Driving along a country road, I ignored a Bridge Out sign and continued on. But in a few miles I came to a stop: The road was completely barricaded. So I turned around and retraced my route. That’s when I saw this sign on the back of the first: “It was, wasn’t it?”}

Signs are funny things — especially road signs. Since my wife works for PennDot, I must support the signage rules they utilize — whether I find them frustrating or not. Every once in a while I get myself in a position where I end up in a traffic jam because I have not paid attention to the signs that inform me of an impending problem.  

In the Gospel of John, Jesus demonstrated signs of his divinity — turning the water into wine at the wedding at Cana, and in the above mentioned text where he healed the son of the royal official — to name two.  

 My question to you is this: how many signs of Jesus’ presence in your life do you miss? How many signs of your guardian angel’s presence in your life do you miss? Sometimes the signs are right there in front of us – yet like road signs, we can be too distracted to see them, or too stubborn to believe them. The Kingdom of G-d, the presence of Jesus is all around us each and every day. Are we too busy to see them?

Pastor Dave