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by Kathy Roman
When I was a little girl, feeling lost or confused, I would talk to God and ask for a sign to show me everything was going to be okay.
As I got older, I put that silliness away for the most part. But superstitions aside, I do still believe that God can speak to us through signs that are meaningful to us. Synchronicities and coincidences at just the right time can support and confirm us. But what about asking for signs like I did as a child? Two unique circumstances taught me valuable lessons.
It was a cloudy night. Not a star could be seen. I was ruminating, waiting on the results of a serious medical test. I stepped outside and looked up at the evening sky. The child in me asked, “God, if everything is going to be alright, please give me a sign. Let me find just one star behind all these clouds and mist.” The test was on. Surely I would be able to find one tiny star to save me. I scoured the leaden sky. Not a one. I went to the front of our house. Nothing. I circumambulated our home entirely. My heart sank. I had days to wait on the test results, and now my fears were worse than ever.
Then a blissful thought popped into my mind and rescued me. It didn’t matter how many clouds were in the sky, or if I was able to find a star. I didn’t need to see a star because whether I saw one or not, I knew that logically, they were there, hiding behind those clouds. This was fact. My epiphany was that I didn’t need to see something to believe in it, and in this case to know it. My goal was to strive now for this level of faith; not vague wishing or hoping, but an absolute knowing:
Mankind is notoriously too dense to read the signs that God sends from time to time. We require drums to be beaten into our ears, before we should wake from our trance and hear the warning and see that to lose oneself in all, is the only way to find oneself.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Verily I say, the human soul is, in its essence, one of the signs of God, a mystery among His mysteries.
– Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 160.
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