cards on the table

There is a tide in the affairs of men which when taken at the flood leads on to great things.
There is another tide which just drowns you.
What are these lights?
I want them to be from God.
Even if it means a warning.
But God hasn't told me they are from him.
Will we ever know?
There is a story in the Bible about a man who dies and goes to hell. He asks for permission to return to warn his family to live a better life.
He is told: "If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, then they will not listen even if someone returns from the dead."
I take this as an explanation for why God doesn't continually offer us entertainments to prove he exists.
He doesn't serve us.
We serve him.
Yet I have long thought the world is so loaded with miracles that we can see him if we wish.
And sometimes we get miracles.
Not on demand.
But on asking.
There is no pilgrimage without a journey.
A Swiss Bishop called Hans Urs Von Balthazar has spoken of "Teo Dramatik" in relation to the claimed apparitions at Medjurgorge.
God's drama.
A rich cycle of miracle and wonderment crafted into everyday life to show us what in some way we've always known.
God is real.
So that's my cards on the table.
I want the lights to be from heaven.
But we must keep considering the primary possibilities of hoax, or film makers, or natural phenonomena.
We must keep considering them.
Even if on Tuesday night when the lights lit up the sky right in front of me, even if directly confronted with the most spectacular refutation of all those theories, even if, as happened, I shook with delight, and laughed out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of the suggestion that anyone was staging this...