The Sign of Jonah

“This generation is an evil generation. It seeks a sign and no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah…”  (Lk 11: 29-32). The Ninevites had violated the covenant God had made with them. Jonah was a sign to them that disaster would befall them if they did not repent.

We are all familiar with signs: a stop sign, a  yield sign; a green, yellow and red traffic light. We also know what a tunnel cloud means or what thunder means. Some of us are also very skilled at reading body language. All of us read signs all of the time.  Why do we miss the signs that signal God’s will for us or signs that warn us that we are out of  sync with what the Spirit is asking of us? Have we numbed ourselves to God’s voice? Have we become deaf to the voice of the Spirit? Are we blind to spiritual realities? Do we dismiss the “Jonah’s” in our lives that God sends to warn us that we are on the wrong path or on a path that will lead to our disaster? For whom or for what are we looking?

Perhaps you are the “Jonah” God has sent to another person to warn him or her that she is headed for destruction and needs to turn back to God. Have you, as did Jonah, attempted to avoid that mission?

“If today you hear his voice,” the psalmist says to us in today’s liturgy, “harden not your hearts.”