Sign Language

Was that my phone? It sounded different! Then I found it lying on my iPad, on which I saw my own face!  Someone was trying to FaceTime me.  Then baby Isaac's smiling face filled the screen!  I had said just this morning that I wished they would FaceTime us, forgetting  it was our son Jamie's day off and that it might be a possibility.

Isaac was animatedly jabbering baby talk as if he were trying to talk to us!  He knows us because we were there last week, and from seeing us on FaceTime this way.  I heard Jamie telling him to say, "Please," about something and saw Isaac rub his hand across his left chest.  "He's giving the sign language word for "please," Jamie explained.

I remembered when we were there they had said the baby-sitter had been teaching him baby sign language, but I hadn't seen him do it much.  I know Isaac is smart enough to talk, but until he does, this is a handy way to communicate.  I remember when his father was little, his "sign language" was to point, then give an affirmative "um," if  we understood, and a negative "um" if we got it wrong! Jamie talked in his own good time, and I'm sure our little grandson, who is 15 months, will, too.

In the Bible, we are told of another who could not speak and had to use sign language. This was also related to a baby. When the priest Zacharias was told by the angel Gabriel that his aged wife Elizabeth would bear a son, he did not believe it. " And behold, thou shalt  be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season," Luke 1:20.

(22) "And when he came out, he could not speak unto them: and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless." When the baby was born, the people wanted him to be called by his father's name, but Elizabeth said his name was John (later known as John the Baptist).

(62) "And they made signs to his father, how he would have him called. (63) And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John...(64) And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God."

John came to prepare the way for Jesus and to point people to Him.  There are signs everywhere today that point to Jesus coming again.  Jesus said in Matthew 16:2-3, "...When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather, for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowring.  O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?"

Genesis 1:15 tells us the sun and the moon are for signs and seasons.  Today we have the signs of the four blood moons and their proximity to Jewish feast days that seem to bear significance.  Let us not fail to read the signs!