Jesus is asked by people following him, who many scholars believe are the same ones that received the bread and fish from the multiplication Jesus performed for them, to perform a sign so that they may believe in him. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that Jesus tells us to discern the finger of God by reading the signs of the times. What’s meant by that? The idea isn’t so much that we look to every 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 this event? What’s God saying to us in this event? An older generation understood this as trying to attune itself to “divine providence.” That practice goes back to biblical times. For example, if a nation was to lose a war, it wasn’t because the other side had superior soldiers, but rather that God had somehow engineered this to teach them a lesson. Or if they were hit by drought, it was because God had actively stopped the heavens from raining, again to teach them a lesson. Scripture does not intend to teach us that God causes wars or stops the heavens from raining; it accepts that they result from natural contingency. The lesson is only that God speaks through them. James Mackey teaches that divine providence is a conspiracy of accidents through which God speaks. Frederick Buechner teases this out a little further by saying: “This does not mean that God makes events happen to us which move us in certain directions like chessmen. Instead, events happen under their own steam as random as rain, which means that God is present in them not as their cause but as the one who, even in the hardest and most hair-raising of them, offers us the possibility of that new life and healing which I believe is what salvation is.” God doesn’t cause AIDS, global warming, the refugee situation in the world, a cancer diagnosis, world hunger, hurricanes, tornadoes, or any other such thing to teach us a lesson, but something in all of these invites us to try to discern what God is saying through them. Likewise, God doesn’t cause your favorite sports team to win a championship; that also results from a conspiracy of accidents. But God speaks through all of these things – even your favorite team’s championship win!