The problem in the world and in the churches, the American theologian Jim Wallis suggests, is that perennially conservatives get it wrong and liberals (over-reacting to conservatives) then don’t get it at all. Nowhere is this truer, I believe, than in how we discern the finger of God in the events of our lives.
Jesus tells us to discern the finger of God in our lives by reading the signs of the times. What is meant by that? The idea isn’t so much that we look to every kind of social, political and religious analysis to try to understand what’s going on in the world, but rather that we look at every event in our lives, personal or global, and ask ourselves: what’s God saying to me in this event? What’s God saying to us in this event?
