As the children of Israel were making their way out of Egypt, Pharaoh had a change of heart. Seems losing all that free labor would have made life harder than he thought. So the Egyptians went after the Hebrews. And the Hebrews got stuck at the Red Sea. In today’s first reading, God tells Moses to push forward. He would make a way.
In the Gospel reading from Matthew 12, some of the scribes and Pharisees come to Jesus and ask Him to show them a sign. Jesus replies, “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it except the sign of Jonah the prophet.” Like Jonah, Jesus came preaching repentance. But Jesus tells them, “There is something greater than Jonah here.”
The scribes and Pharisees wanted to challenge Jesus. They wanted a sign so that Jesus could prove His power and authority. Show us what you got! Obviously, this is wrong. Jesus didn’t have to prove Himself to anyone. Unfortunately, I think that we often take on that same attitude. We want God to do something for us, or we won’t believe. But that’s backwards. You see, God doesn’t do things to make us believe. But when we believe, we’ll find that he does amazing things. So it’s not like this: signs first and then we have faith. It’s more like this: when we have faith, we’ll recognize the signs.
Father, strengthen our faith, that we may see more clearly the many signs you give us daily. Amen.
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