Of signs and symbols

Of Signs and Symbols

Christians believe that God speaks, and his word, the text of the bible, has a key and central role, as a primary reference and source of accurate doctrine.  Sometimes we exalt that so much that we forget that Jesus is the Living Word at the centre, and that the written word itself points to many other dynamic ways of hearing God. It says, for example, ‘my sheep hear his voice’, and the image is not of scholarly sheep, reading up by candlelight - the sense is the voice rings out over them. They know it by tone and timbre, by experience, and won’t follow otherwise. The same gospel reminds us that diligent study of the word is not, in itself, the same thing a coming to Him. (John 10:27, 5:39) 

Reading the text of the covenant law, knowing the history and poetry and prophecy,  knowing the teaching of Jesus, and teaching about Him, all matters. I've done a lot of it. It informs and builds and trains, gives key context and boundaries. Jesus himself refuted the devil’s wiles with “it is written” – including a subtle temptation to misuse the promises of protection of Psalm 91. Among all this study of the word, the sense of a  “quickened word”,  perhaps out of original context, but weighted in the Holy Spirit with a current meaning and application, is a devotional form that many know.

But the text itself points beyond both this disciplined study and devotional quickening of the text  - hearing and seeing Him directly matters – even in the old covenant. How would we know a good father, or feel satisfied in marriage communication, if only via writing? Notice how many Old Testament characters receive revelation that is reported as “and God said”. How did He say? Not, to them, by a word jumping off the page.  Abraham, for example, the father of faith, must have been having a distinctly experiential revelation as he leaves Ur, and believes God for generational inheritance as he looks at a starry sky, or any of the other key moments he walks through.

The written word shows how some other modes of communication can be established. Some of the prophets, like Zechariah, interact with angels among the visions that cultivate the word of the Lord to them.  Others, like Jeremiah, seem to not have that awareness of angels, but do have other modes. The diversity is all just part of the biblical background that flows straight into the New Testament … how much of this experiential mode (angels, dreams, visions) do we have  the opening pages of Matthew alone?  Or in Acts?  The answer is, a lot.  We need move beyond the inoculating vision of Christmas cards, angels in fields, shepherds overseeing sheep who hear their voice, and start to see and know the host of heaven at work.

Sometimes He uses visual object lessons. “What do you see?” God questioned Jeremiah, who reports he sees an almond branch (Jer 1:11). We don’t’ know if his eye was lighting on a  tree in the yard, like the one above, or an inner picture.   Either can be valid – we can be trained to see his word in either place, or both.  Whatever it was, God says he has “seen correctly”. Then He says, in the next stage in the conversation: “I’m watching over my word to perform it” (Jer 1:12) .The words for ‘almond’  and ‘watch’ are similar in Jeremiah’s  language -  so we see that word play, like  prophetic puns, can be part of what he says: Other examples of those puns could be cited, but that will do for now.

In Jeremiah 1, the next image he mentions is a boiling pot,  tilting from the north. Again there is a dialogue, a question and response. What do you see?  All Jeremiah sees, initially, is the image of the pot. God again adds the interpretation. Revelation and Interpretation are a two stage process, sometimes closely tied, but which may leave us pondering meaning for some time, and which may involve other people.  He tells Jeremiah it means an outpouring of judgment from the north is coming – and indeed it did.  This is a disclosure of some of the early words, and also the ways, that God spoke to him. Images, questions, riddles, nature, pots and armies.

So its biblical to believe we can be guided by God, in various ways.  And that symbols of the natural world, or common items, pots and trees, can be highlighted as strategic.  The moderate, more conservative side of me needs to go over that groundwork. If we believe the word, we should be in for all this.

So today, are up for that listening? He may be speaking through any thing we see, in the minds eye, or physical view, and maybe a word play in English, or he drop an unknown word to intrigue us to seek the meaning.  Can this go astray? Perhaps. Is it biblical? Yes.  How do we discern?  By being willing to step into the unknown, and by training, to discern, to weigh. This should be basic - his sheep hear his voice. 

I have an example that has an outworking for Bendigo and this time.

A personal example - exit signs. 

So, for quite a long time, i‘ve known a particular symbol as part of the personal language of guidance, the humble green Exit sign.  The older ones were just text, now there is an image as well. 

Normally I don’t notice them, they stay in the background, as exit signs should, waiting for some unlikely emergency use. However sometimes they seem to stand out, to be highlighted to me, at strategic moments. 

This happened (and happens) infrequently but enough that I noticed.  As a teacher, I might be in a staff room, for example, which I’d often worked in, and as a conversation reached a particular point, an exit sign in the corner would seem to stand out, as I’d feel a quickened sense that we were on a key moment.  Up to that moment I barely would have known if the room had an exit sign, and such highlighting always seemed to correspond to a key moment or confirmation of God’s path. Someone might suggest an idea, and the sign, unnoticed till then, would seem to stand out over their head as a mode of endorsement. It happened rarely  -  don’t think ever twice in same location, yet enough that I noticed it recurring over the years.

So usually a subtle highlighting, but sometimes a little more dramatic.  For example, one morning I flew to Sydney for work, and got there mid morning, Then, 5 team members from my workplace, myself included, happened to converge on level 5, a new floor for the company, under an Exit sign.  We all just seemed to come from different directions at the same time.  “Woah!!”  I said, “convergence! Hold hands … lets do a parachute jump” …  and somehow it didn’t seem too odd to stand together  holding hands and pretend to jump out of a plane as a group, on the new office floor. We’d just been through a difficult season, so it was a statement of solidarity through the difficulty. (They probably saw it as bit of fun, but I was feeling more like prophetic activity). My email beeped and I checked the subject on my phone:  It said “level 5 is now open for business”. The sign had helped me seize the moment.
 
At other times a corridor would seem to light up with the signs and their reflections, usually at night as I was about to leave a work role, seemingly a confirmation that this was or had been a valid domain of work.

Generally speaking, the occasional accent on these literal signs seemed some signpost of his presence, a sense of being on the right path.

Still, I thought it was just a type of personal symbolism He was developing with me, like almond branches and pots might have been continued to be for Jeremiah. (Perhaps Jeremiah might have later noticed the almond tree stirring, as a private confirmation of God’s previous word, as he was rejected by the king and or officials).

 I didn’t always know why these exit signs were a mode for me, but it always seemed good. Other recurring symbols were sometimes quickened with different meanings.

 
Layers of meaning can unfold

In 2016 I started to connect it with a scriptural sense.  I had been given Rev 3:7-8  some time previously 

These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut.  I know that you have little strength...

And I was fast becoming aware of the key significance of another ‘door’ scripture, in Revelation 4,

after this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.

That last passage really started to resonate. I listened to it over and over. All of the newer exit signs had an image of a person going through a door-  and this now felt as if called into higher places. I started to experience what that verse was talking about, and felt like He had always been leading me to this place, as though the signs had also been a trail of sorts. The upward call. I discussed it with a prophetic friend, as we flew home from NZ. They’d placed us in the emergency row, so we had exit signs on both sides, over doors in the skies, which seemed fitting.  

A favourite verse of mine is John 10:10, about abundant life. The lead up to that (John 10:7), also discloses that Jesus is the door, or gate.

part 2