Confessions of a Sign Whore......

An Evil and Adulterous Generation Looks for Signs -- Confessions of a Sign Whore

By the way, this is my first Blog "COMMENT THAT BECAME A POST! Post" for 2015.  If you read the comment, don't waste your time. It's the same thing. 

Nina, You've burned away for me just for a fleeting moment the stubble and revealed (for me) with piercing clarity the only "that" which remains -- FAITH, HOPE, & LOVE. 

I feel at this very point in time you've bypassed so many signs that consume my life -- marriage, kids, reasonable health. These signs proclaim a message. The message is from God and the articulation of the message is, "I love you." Buuuut they are still just signs. They are less than. Less than what? They are less than..... the substance. The substance....communion with Love itself, the creator. 

I am firmly convinced at this unique point in time in your life God has disciplined your heart and mind to forgo (for maybe a moment...this moment!!) dilly dallying with signs (Steve signs -- marriage, kids, & a decent pathology) and to crash headlong into the substance -- abandoned delight in communion with Christ. 

Let's be frank here -- Christ ripped signs. He ripped them because of their numbing potential to deafen ears to God's ecstatic words of love poured out. Christ ripped signs because even for minimalists like myself - (I am kind of a sort of quasi-psuedo minimalist) .. Lets start that sentence again. Even for minimalist Steve, since every inclination of my heart (as a child of Adam) is evil, huge hoarder potential exists in my heart. This hoarder heart psychosis squishes out room for the substance of love which is God God and Jesus (thank goodness) knows it exists in my soul. He knows it and warns against the insidious crowding effect of "sign play" and the lust trap that accompanies.... signs. 

Your post screams (in a more pure way than I personally as a "going through space and time WITH SIGNS traveler" -- could ever understand .... ) 

Redo... 

Your post screams to me "GOD I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! WITH OR WITHOUT SIGNS -- I LOVE YOU AND I AM YOURS." "No hubby sign, I LOVE YOU LORD!" "No great health sign, I ADORE YOU JESUS." No offspring sign, I WANT YOU GOD. I WANT YOU - the substance and author of GOOD to which all GOOD signs point. 

In the darkness, I hold to faith.
In the confusion I shake out the cob webs and numbness with hope. 
In the bleeding tears, I press my face against the sorrow and blood that flow mingled down your torn face my savior. 

Your post preached that proclamation of faith, hope, and intimate communion (love) to me. I know that might seem a stretch but it did. We say that noone graduates from Jesus school but your post is a testimony of a graduate from sign school. 

In summary, your post is an incredibly pure and powerful testimony from a child of God who longs for His presence in the absence of signs. Your image is an eternal image for it is the image of Jesus trusting God in weakness, brokenness, and the abject absence of signs. 

Faith is the substance of things hoped for and Christ in you is the hope of Glory so I'd definitely keep rolling the dice with hope. (I didn't need to remind you of that -- so if you're thinking, "Steve, was that for me?" "No Nina, that was for me.")

One of my favorite "absence of signs" verses in all the bible is Genesis 39:21. When Joseph was completely screwed and abandoned for the umpteenth time while in prison the story goes...... "but the Lord was with Joseph and showed Him steadfast love." That's ultimately the message I felt in your post. As you wrestle in your own prison of questions and admitted disappointment I so much hear you in your story, "But the Lord was with Nina and showed Nina steadfast love." 

In the absence of signs, Nina saw clearly... steadfast love.

Lord Give me eyes that see.