Signs & Wonders

When the local public transportation agency in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, received a federal grant to refurbish their headquarters, they wanted to call attention to the new upgrades. Apparently they were concerned about putting too fine a point on it, so instead they went the other way.

In a playful reference to their name, the Transit Agency of Central Kentucky, also known as TACK, installed a giant red thumbtack at the front of the entrance.

Glen Arney, CEO of TACK, said he initially considered outsourcing the job, but the only place he found was an out of state firm that wanted to charge them well over $100,000. So Arney and a few employees found a YouTube video to help them build one onsite.

At 21’ 7” tall and weighing about 3,000 pounds, the new agency addition was certified by adjudicator as holding the Guinness World Record for the largest thumbtack, beating out the previous benchmark of 19’ 8.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Sometimes in life, God has to do something really big and obvious to get our attention.

Tim Hogan is the founder and CEO SaferStreet Solutions, a development firm focusing on improving traffic safety and reducing pedestrian deaths. For years, he and his team were looking at ways to prevent the phenomenon known as distracted driving, which is statistically comparable to drunk driving as a culprit for traffic-related fatalities.

Inspired by the signs that offer real-time feedback to speeding drivers, Hogan and his team invented the SmartSign. The signs are designed to identify motorists who hold their phones while driving, and display a message warning them to stop: “PHONE DOWN.”

Matt Gregory is a reporter in Washington DC. When the SmartSign was implemented in his city, he was somewhat skeptical of the sign’s efficacy. Matt said, “So, I went for a drive with my phone in my hand. And sure enough, ‘Phone Down’!”

Hogan says the device works by using sensors to identify the unique combination of heat signatures that result from a human holding a phone. If the phone is cradled or resting elsewhere, the sign doesn’t light up.

Rick Birt from the DC Highway Safety Office says the goal is to introduce the signs to the public as a form of behavior intervention. “Last year nationally, 3,500 people died from distracted driving-related crashes. The goal of these signs is to provide instantaneous feedback to motorists so that they have that opportunity to make a better choice.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God is faithful to remind us when we are veering off of the path given for us, but it’s up to each of us to respond in obedience.

It was the height of summer in the UK and then the sky darkened. On the evening of July 21, 2021, hailstones the size of golf balls fell from the sky, smashing windows and battering cars.

While the hailstorm was unusual in its severity, it was mild compared to a hailstorm that struck Calgary in Canada in June 2020. Hailstones the size of tennis balls caused damage to at least 70,000 homes and vehicles, destroyed crops and left the area facing a $940 million repair bill.

And climate change is altering the pattern of hailstorms. In the last three years in Texas, Colorado, and Alabama, the records for largest hailstone have been broken, reaching sizes of up to 6.2 inches in diameter. Hail damage in the US now averages more than $10 billion a year.

Hail forms as droplets of water are carried upward into a thunderstorm. Updraughts carry them into parts of the atmosphere where the air is cold enough to freeze the droplets. Moisture from the air accumulates on the outside of the drops of ice as it moves through the air, causing the hailstone to grow in onion-like layers.

Hailstones of less than 1 inch diameter typically fall at 25-49 mph. But downbursts can feature vertical windspeeds of 156-179 mph with correspondingly destructive hail. The heaviest hailstone ever recorded fell in Bangladesh in 1986, weighed 2.25 lbs. The hailstorm killed as many as 92 people and injured 400.

But just how big can a hailstone get? Experts now estimate the largest possible hailstone at 10.6 inches across or "bowling ball sized.” Meteorologist Matthew Kumjian of Pennsylvania State University said, “Strong 'supercell' thunderstorms produce the world's largest hailstones. So, the strongest of these storms today is probably capable of producing a supergiant stone.” It's clear that the really big stuff is likely to still keep hurling down at us. All we can do is prepare, and find a decent shelter.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Throughout Scripture God has used hailstones as a form of judgment upon his enemies. This will be particularly true in the end times when hailstones weighing 100 pounds each will bring devastating judgment to the earth. “And men cursed God for the plague of hail, because it was so horrendous” (Rev. 16:21).

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced that it had confirmed two new mind-blowing lightning “megaflash” records. These findings came after careful data-checking and rigorous certification processes.

On April 29, 2020, a sprawling mass of strong to severe thunderstorms produced a 477.2-mile-long lightning strike over the southern United States. It stretched from near Houston to southeast Mississippi. The record beats out a 440-mile-long megaflash that occurred over southern Brazil on Halloween of 2018.

Megaflashes dwarf ordinary lightning strikes. As Earth dwellers, we’re accustomed to seeing what’s going on near the ground, including conventional cloud to ground lightning bolts. Hundreds or thousands such strikes might accompany a run-of-the-mill thunderstorm on a summer’s afternoon.

Megaflashes are different. They’re enormous. They snake through regions of high electric field and can travel for hundreds of miles while lasting more than 10 seconds. Since most storm clouds are fewer than 10 miles high, lightning can’t grow terribly long in the vertical direction. But megaflashes have plenty of space to sprawl in the horizontal.

All megaflashes accompany clusters of thunderstorms that often rage overnight and can occupy an area the size of several states, last for hours, and stretch hundreds of miles or more end-to-end. They’re a staple of the spring and early summer across the southern and central United States, and are also common in South America.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This, and other, record-breaking lightning flashes will shrink into insignificance compared to the most significant lightning display seen by the whole world. It will happen on the Day of Judgment prophesied in Scripture. “For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day” (Matt. 24:27, Luke 17:24).

Professor Craig Keener shares the following story in an issue of CT magazine:

Around 1960, in the Republic of Congo, a two-year-old girl named Thérèse was bitten by a snake. She cried out for help, but by the time her mother, Antoinette, reached her, Thérèse was unresponsive and seemed to have stopped breathing. No medical help was available to them in their village, so Antoinette strapped little Thérèse to her back and ran to a neighboring village.

According to the US National Library of Medicine, brain cells start dying less than five minutes after their oxygen supply is removed. After six minutes, lack of oxygen can cause severe brain damage or death. Antoinette estimates that, given the distance and the terrain, it probably took about three hours to reach the next village. By the time they arrived, her daughter was likely either dead or had sustained significant brain damage.

Antoinette immediately sought out a family friend, Coco Ngoma Moyise, who was an evangelist in the neighboring village. They prayed over the lifeless girl and immediately she started breathing again. By the next day, she was fine—no long-term harm and no brain damage. Today, Thérèse has a master’s degree and is a pastor in Congo.

Craig writes, “When I heard this story, as a Westerner I was naturally tempted toward skepticism, but it was hard to deny. Thérèse is my sister-in-law and Antoinette was my mother-in-law.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Not every claim to a miraculous raising today is authentic. Everywhere in the world, most people who die stay dead. Even those resuscitated miraculously, such as Lazarus, die again; all healing in our mortal bodies is by definition temporary. Such miracles do, however, remind us that Jesus Christ, who raised the dead during his earthly ministry, is the risen and exalted Lord. Sometimes he continues to grant signs of the future, reminders of the resurrection hope that in him awaits us all.

There's a Signpost Forest just outside of Watson Lake, Yukon. It was started in 1942 when a soldier named Carl K. Lindley was injured while working on the Alcan Highway. He was taken to the Army air station in Watson Lake to recuperate.

In those days a simple sign post pointed out the distances to various points along the highway. One of the signposts was damaged by a bulldozer. Lindley was ordered to repair the sign, and decided to personalize the job by adding a sign pointing towards his home town, Danville, Illinois, and giving the distance to it. Several other people added directions to their home towns, and the idea has been snowballing ever since.

Since those early days, tourists continued the tradition, and there are currently ( as of 2021) 80,000 signs from around the world. Now the Signpost Forest takes up a couple of acres, with huge new panels being constantly added, snaking through the trees. There are street signs, welcome signs, signatures on dinner plates, and license plates from around the world.

We all long for home, especially our heavenly home. Throughout life we encounter signposts that point us to our home in heaven. The blessings given to us by our heavenly Father such as family, friends, worship music, the laughter of a child, are all signposts that point toward home.

As of May, 2021, the US earthquake early warning system can issue earthquake alerts to cellphone users in California, Oregon, and Washington. The MyShake app is an early warning system that aims to let people know about incoming shaking, so they can have at least a few seconds to find a safe spot to ride out the earthquake. The alert system is successful because communications systems are now faster than the speed of shaking waves moving through the ground.

The earthquake early warning system could also give residents in the Pacific Northwest as much as 80 seconds of warning ahead of shaking from a magnitude nine earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. This is a monstrous fault zone off the West Coast. This fault last ruptured in such a quake on Jan. 26, 1700, and sent catastrophic tsunamis not only to the Pacific Northwest, but thousands of miles away to Japan.

The earthquake early warning system got a bit of a test run in Los Angeles County last September when a magnitude 4.5 earthquake hit the South El Monte area. This triggered an alert which was sent to 2.2 million mobile devices.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The Bible is an early warning system for the devastating judgment about to jolt the entire world. Those who listen can take shelter before it strikes (Mark 13:8; Luke 21:11).

Pastor and author Craig Brian Larson writes:

In January, 2021, as the coronavirus continued to spread, we received concerning news from a family in our church. Jose Alvarado, his wife, Sayra, their son Antonio, and his mother Martha had all caught the virus.

While other family members were largely over it, Jose continued to get worse and he was admitted to the hospital. His symptoms included a fever over 104, uncontrollable coughing, and developing pneumonia. The oxygen level in his blood was dropping quickly, and doctors moved Jose to the intensive care unit the next day.

After a couple of days in ICU, his fever finally broke, but the fluid in his lungs persisted, along with coughing and weakness. Jose continued to fight and do various exercises, and this led to continued improvement over time. After 10 days in ICU, around 3 a.m., Jose saw four angels standing around his bed, two on a side. It was dream-like. He did not see their faces. He had been lying on his chest to drain the liquid from his lungs, but the angels helped him turn over to his back to breathe more easily, and he instantly felt healing.

The angels left, and the nurse came around 5 a.m. to draw blood for daily tests. Jose asked her what happened overnight, why there were so many people in the room. She said no one had been in the room until she came in, and even so only one person is allowed at a time due to COVID protocols. (Hospital rules do not apply to angels!)

After breakfast, the nurse told Jose they were moving him out of ICU to a regular room, since he was doing better. A few days later, the doctor surveyed Jose’s test results and oxygen reading and said, “You’re going home today.” That afternoon he was home with his family eating a delicious meal. Although Jose continued to useoxygen for a few days as he recovered at home, the turnaround in his symptoms was dramatic once the angels intervened.

In his book, The Art of Prayer, Timothy Jones tells the story of his friend, Jeanie Hunter:

In … 1983, surgery to have a tumor removed from my ear, left a facial nerve severely damaged, causing paralysis and weakness on the left side of my face. My hearing was so affected that I had to wear a hearing aid. The nerve controlling taste was cut so that food tasted like wet cardboard. And my middle ear was injured, leaving a constant ringing. On top of all this, I was so dizzy I had to spend most of the day in bed or lying on the couch.

(In) 1987, someone from my church called and asked if I was going to attend the Wednesday morning service. ... I finally agreed. As I drove to the church, I could sense a voice saying, “This could be the last time you drive to the church sick.” I knew the medical community had done all it could. Could it be possible that Jesus would heal me?

[At the close of the service Jeanie went forward for prayer.] My prayer was “Lord, please either heal me or let me die. I just cannot live with this illness any longer.” When I opened my eyes, I saw I was bathed in light. Then from the middle of the light, God sent a washing of love that penetrated every part of my being. As I stood in the light, it was as though I could see 4-inch-tall letters that read, “YOU ARE HEALED.”

Suddenly I found my hearing aid on my lap. For the first time I was able to hear without it. The noise in my head and the dizziness vanished. Feeling in my extremities had returned. I could actually walk through a door without hitting the door frame. And taste! It came back in a little over a month, while I was licking envelopes in the office. That evening, as my daughter and I went up and down the aisles of the supermarket, I kept opening the packages as I threw them into the cart. I hadn't tasted food for four years, and I couldn't wait!

A 20-year-old woman with cerebral palsy was pronounced dead by paramedics, and placed in a body bag. Three hours later, she was found alive. The ordeal started when Timesha Beauchamp was found by several relatives with pale lips and difficulty breathing, and called 911. When paramedics with the Fire Department arrived, they found her unresponsive and not breathing, according to family attorney Geoffrey Fieger.

After paramedics pronounced her dead, however, Timesha’s godmother, who works as a registered nurse, told the medics that she detected a faint pulse. Fieger said, “They told her the movements were involuntary. It did not change their opinion as to the fact that they felt she was dead … [but] when the body bag was opened and they were getting ready to embalm the body, Timesha's eyes were open and she was breathing.”

Fire Chief Johnny L. Menifee released a statement corroborating many of these details. "They checked multiple pulse points on the patient." He expressed disappointment that his medics missed the signs. Menifee said of the first responders, "They feel terrible that this happened. They can't imagine how this possibly happened. They're emotionally upset that this happened … and rightfully so.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even in situations that appear hopeless, there is always a possibility for a miracle. Don't stop believing just because experts tell you it's impossible.

In a sermon, the Reverend Ethan Magness quoted the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard who told this parable:

A crowded theater hosted a variety show, with various acts in it. Each act was more fantastic than the one prior, so it created louder and louder applause from the audience. Suddenly, a clown rushed on to the stage and said, “I apologize for this interruption, but I regret to inform you that our theater is on fire! You need to leave right away, and in an orderly fashion.”

But the audience thought he was part of the act, so they laughed and applauded. They thought he was very committed to the role. But the clown again implored them that they needed to leave right away or they would get seriously injured, maybe even die. And again, they greeted him with loud and thunderous applause. At last, he could do no more, and so he left the building, and the people were destroyed.

And Kierkegaard concludes in this sobering way: “Our age will go down in fiery destruction not to the sound of mourning but to applause and cheering.”

Tilly Smith and her family relaxed on the beach. Their first family vacation had taken them to Thailand. That morning, ten-year-old Tilly, her parents, and sister Holly, went for a walk along Mai Khao beach. They enjoyed the warm breeze in their faces and felt the sand squish in between their toes.

Two weeks prior to their holiday, Tilly had learned about tsunamis in her geography class. She did not find geography tantalizing, but the video her teacher showed had caught her attention. So, as Tilly and her family walked the beach, she noticed the waves going out but not coming in.

Tilly alerted her parents that they were surrounded by signs that something unusual and cataclysmic would occur. At first they were dismissive, but Tilly's passion and persistence paid off. She began shouting, "There is going to be a tsunami!"

Now, what would you do if you were on vacation with your family and your ten-year-old daughter started screaming on the beach that a tsunami was about to strike? Tilly shouted louder and louder, and her panic frightened her younger sister, who began to sob hysterically.

I imagine the volume increasing with her parents saying something like, "Tilly, calm down! It will be okay. You're scaring your sister! Get yourself under control, now!" Tilly's dad took Holly back to the hotel to calm her down. But Tilly looked around and saw the people in the ocean, on the sand, and just knew in her heart that everyone was in danger. Tilly ran back to the hotel to find her dad talking with a security guard. He said, "I know this sounds completely mad, but my daughter says there's going to be a tsunami.”

The security guard listened not to a PhD candidate, brain surgeon, or NASA scientist but to a passionate plea coming from a ten-year-old British schoolgirl. The guard listened and then shouted for people to get off the beach. People scattered all over the place as pandemonium set in. The hotel lobby, on a higher floor, became a gathering place

A tsunami, triggered by an earthquake at the floor of the Indian Ocean, struck. This tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people. But not one person from Tilly's beach died that we know of. Tilly's dad, in shock after learning of the horrific devastation and suffering, said to Tilly, "What if we hadn't listened to you?"

Richard Lee had been the lone police officer in the small town of Croydon, New Hampshire for 20 years. So, when the local board decided to outsource their law enforcement needs to the state police, Lee walked out, disgusted.

But disgust was likely shared by many of his fellow residents and onlookers, because after surrendering the keys to his cruiser, his badge, and his firearm, he also took off his uniform. All of it. Lee said, “I gave them my uniform shirt. I gave them my ballistic vest. ... I sat down in the chair, took off my boots, took off my pants, put those in the chair, and put my boots back on, and walked out the door.”

Lee later explained that he didn’t want to face the prospect of arrest for unauthorized use of police gear. After leaving the board meeting, Lee walked for almost a mile before his wife came with the car to pick him up.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the Bible, servants of God often used their clothing (or lack thereof) to express displeasure, heartache, or mourning; such bold prophetic displays are meant to convey God's heart for justice and righteousness and the deep shame of falling short of God's standards.

Source:

Associated Press, “Police chief stripped of duties disrobes, walks into storm in underwear,” KomoNews.com (2-19-20)

In his book Whisper, Mark Batterson writes that on December 26, 2004, the third-largest earthquake ever recorded by seismograph occurred deep beneath the Indian Ocean. It registered 9.1-magnitude on the Richter scale, and the shock waves produced tsunami waves more than one hundred feet in height, traveling five hundred miles per hour and reaching a radius of three thousand miles. This deadliest tsunami in history claimed 227,898 lives, but one people group living right in its path miraculously survived without a single casualty.

The Moken are an Austronesian ethnic group that live on the open seas from birth to death. Their handcrafted wooden boats, called kabang, function as houseboats for these sea gypsies. Moken children learn to swim before they learn to walk. They can see twice as clearly underwater as landlubbers. And if there were an underwater breath-holding contest, it would be no contest. But it wasn't any of these skills that saved them from the tsunami. What saved them was their intimacy with the ocean. The Moken know its moods and messages better than any oceanographer, reading ocean waves the way we read street signs.

On the day of the earthquake, an amateur photographer from Bangkok was taking pictures of the Moken when she became concerned by what she saw. As the sea started to recede, many of the Moken were crying. They knew what was about to happen. They recognized that the birds had stopped chirping, the cicadas had gone silent, the elephants were headed toward higher ground, and the dolphins were swimming farther out to sea.

Fishermen in the same vicinity as the Moken were blindsided by the tsunami and had no survivors. "They were collecting squid," said one Moken survivor. "They don't know how to look." The waves and birds and cicadas and elephants and dolphins were speaking to those Burmese fishermen, but sadly they didn't know how to listen.

A local anthropologist who speaks Moken said, "The water receded very fast and one wave, one small wave, came so they recognized that this is not ordinary."

Possible Preaching Angles: Listening to God; Attention; Prayer—Like the Moken, Christians are people who can pay attention to the presence of danger and the presence of God.

The 137-mile long Atchafalaya River is a distributary of the Mississippi River that meanders through south central Louisiana and empties into the Gulf of Mexico, serving as a significant source of income for the region because of the many industrial and commercial opportunities it offers. Yet as scenic, productive, and enriching as this river is, it owes all its strength—all of it—to the mighty Mississippi. That's because a distributary doesn't have its own direct water source; it is an overflow of something else. So when the Mississippi is high, the Atchafalaya is high; and when the Mississippi is low, the Atchafalaya is low. What the Atchafalaya accomplishes depends wholly on something other than itself.

The church is a lot like the Atchafalaya River. Anything of value she accomplishes is always tied to her source. So if she somehow loses connection with it—with her first love, the Living Word—she loses all power. She dries up and empties.

Even though our churches are only able to be the object of revival rather than its producer, I don't think our waiting is as passive as it seems. Let me illustrate with an image from James K. A. Smith's book Imagining the Kingdom:

I cannot choose to fall asleep. The best I can do is choose to put myself in a posture and rhythm that welcomes sleep. I lie down in bed, on my left side, with my knees drawn up; I close my eyes and breath slowly, putting my plans out of my mind. But the power of my will or consciousness stops there. I want to go to sleep, and I've chosen to climb into bed—but in another sense sleep is not something under my control or at my beckoned call. I call up the visitation of sleep by imitating the breathing and posture of a sleeper … . There is a moment when sleep "comes" settling on this imitation of itself which I have been offering to it, and I succeed in becoming what I was trying to be. Sleep is a gift to be received, not a decision to be made. And yet it is a gift that requires a posture of reception—a kind of active welcome.

In 1949, researchers asked a group of students at Ivy League schools to perform a simple task: identify playing cards. There were just two catches. First, these cards were shown very quickly. Second, the researchers were using a deck of four ordinary playing cards and six "trick cards" with odd colors and suits (red spades, black hearts, and the like).

The researchers discovered that it took the students four times longer to identify a "trick card" than a normal card. The students' brains struggled to process something as out-of-the-ordinary as a red six of clubs. Even after they had seen two or three trick cards, it still took extra time for them to identify trick cards.

In many cases, the students tried to "compromise" what they expected to see with what they actually saw. For instance, when they saw a red six of clubs they described it as "the six of clubs illuminated by red light." In other words, the participants often couldn't accept the facts of what they just saw because they didn't expect to see it.

The researchers called their study "The Perception of Incongruity," which simply means that when we encounter something that doesn't fit our worldview, we have a strong tendency to ignore it. Or we tend to compromise to make it fit into our assumptions about how we think the world should work. The researchers noted that even smart people (like Ivy League students) fall prey to the perception of incongruity.

Possible Preaching Angles: Miracles; God, power of; Supernatural; Demonic; Worldview—This study raises an interesting question: Is it possible to be confronted with God's power, the reality of miracles, or the presence of the demonic, and yet we deny it because it doesn't fit our worldview? We refuse to see the miracle because we do not expect to see miracles? We are guilty of the "perception of incongruity" and we have to "compromise" what we see so it fits into our worldview.

What would it feel like to catch a 40-foot wave and ride it into shore? During a competition at surfing hot spot Maverick's, about 22-miles from San Francisco, a Sports Illustrated story described the incredible rides of a surfer named Darryl [the] "Flea" Virostko:

For his first wave, a 40-footer, he made a beautiful drop, essentially skiing down the face of the wave. The breaking wave exploded in a huge whitewash and Virostko raced ahead of it to safety … On his second ride, Virostko did something few surfers in the world can do. Rather than ski down the face of the 35-foot wave, he used his feet to point the nose of the board straight up and went free-falling … He positioned himself to catch the oncoming barrel and rode inside it. When he emerged from the tube, he surfed the wave to its terminus … On his third wave, Virostko … took off right at the peak of a 40-footer, made a graceful drop and rode it serenely. His [whole body] looked utterly relaxed though he was being chased by a wave big enough to kill.

Imagine sitting on a little board and having a forty-foot wall of water roaring at you and then deciding to stand up on that little board. I don't think anyone who surfs at Maverick's comes away thinking, "That was boring. Maybe tonight I can do something exciting like watch TV!"

A revival is a lot like catching a wave. At different times in history, God has built a wave for the church to ride. We can't manufacture a wave on our own efforts, but we can experience the thrill of getting on our boards and riding it in. That's why surfers use a phrase that also applies to Christians—"If it swells, ride it!" Like Virostko, we can be "utterly relaxed" while we're "being chased by a wave big enough to kill."

In an issue of Christianity Today, a Muslim man describes his commitment to follow Isa al Masih, Jesus the Messiah. Suprisingly, a rather "ordinary" miracle caused this man to open his heart to Jesus. Here's how he described the miracle:

One night the only food my wife and I had was a small portion of macaroni. My wife prepared it very nicely. Then one of her friends knocked on the door. I told myself, The macaroni is not sufficient for even the two of us, so how will it be enough for three of us? But because we have no other custom, we opened the door, and she came in to eat with us.

While we were eating, the macaroni started to multiply; it became full in the bowl. I suspected that something was wrong with my eyes, so I started rubbing them. I thought maybe my wife hid some macaroni under the small table, so I checked, but there was nothing. My wife and I looked at each other, but because the guest was there we said nothing.

Afterward I lay down on the bed, and as I slept, Isa came to me and asked me, "Do you know who multiplied the macaroni?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "I am Isa al Masih [Jesus, the Messiah]. If you follow me, not only the macaroni but your life will be multiplied."