Human beings tend to look for signs that will interpret various experiences or affirm plans and decisions. In their faith lives, there are any number of people who ask for signs from God, and God seems to come through for them frequently and generously. Sr. Ephrem Hollermann writes that she sometimes envies them because she has never been a good “reader of signs” in her spiritual life. When God breaks into my life, it seems more like a fleeting moment of intensified divine presence, unaccompanied by the concreteness of a sign. I wonder if I am too much like the Pharisees in today’s Gospel, who seem to have missed concrete signs all along the way. But it’s not just the Pharisees who miss this. In the scene immediately preceding today’s text, Jesus miraculously fed four thousand with just seven loaves and several fish. Within the ten verses that follow today’s Gospel, Jesus addresses his disciples with a barrage of questions: “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and fail to see? Do you have ears and fail to hear? And do you remember when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand? Do you not yet understand?” Small wonder Jesus’ frustration gets the best of him: “Why does this generation seek a sign? Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.” It seems a sign “on demand” will not be forthcoming. Whether we are sign readers or caught off guard by jolts of the divine, we face the same challenge to be continually alert to the workings of God in our lives. No sign, after all, will be given to a faithless generation.