In the interest of privacy, Laura and Bryan both preferred not to show their faces for this piece.
Today, I drove past a woman holding a colorful “God Loves You” sign, sidewalk-stationed 50 paces from my destination. I’ve wondered about these sign-holders. Who are these people? Why do they hold up God signs?
I grew up in New York City, and passed people with the same hand-drawn signs frequently. These were part of the midtown landscape, like a Broadway marquee, or the singing Naked Cowboy. Some shouted Bible verses; some simply stood, like this woman. Why?
We do things expecting a certain result, and this seemed a purposeful effort. I was curious.
I parked, walked back and introduced myself, asking if she’d be willing to speak to me on record about her sign. She offered a wide smile beneath a silver sequined visor. Her name was Laura, and she was happy to talk to me about her mission. This surprised me. I figured she’d be a little crazy- or maybe had taken enough abuse from passers-by that she would be wary. She was neither.
We sat under a nearby bus stop shelter to escape the Florida summer sun. I dug right in, and asked her why she created this sign, jotting notes as she spoke.
“God told me to,” she said simply.
She looked at me through sunglasses atop of regular glasses, beneath that visor that held back a short bush of grey hair, balancing her magic-markered poster on a shoe adorned with sparkled striped shoelaces. Laura resembled someone’s slightly eccentric, spirited grandmother. She seemed a little older than her 62 years, possibly because of the Florida sun, possibly because her life, as she described, was shadowed by her parents’ rampant alcoholism, her own dalliances with drugs, drug dealing, witchcraft, the free love and drama of the Woodstock era, and the turmoil inflicted by a daughter lost to crack and eventually, suicide. All of this, she said, was her life before she asked God to intervene and make something more out of her.
I found her to be charming, and from sight could not have anticipated she’d have quite the factious past. I’d have had an easier time believing she’d been a PTA President, and a Readers-Digest-subscribing homemaker in her time.
“I asked God to tell me what I personally could do at this age to let people know that He loves them,” she continued. “Rather than smack them over the head, I wanted to show His love.”
God answered, she said, with the directive to create her sign and stand on sidewalks in outreach. Roughly 10 times a week on a schedule, she obliges.
The sign elicits some conversation, epithets from passing cars, “flipped birds,” but “never anyone taking God’s name in vain,” Laura explained. “That I couldn’t take. But an ‘F-you’- I just find that stuff humorous.”
As she spoke, I decided when we concluded I’d run and get her a cold drink. The heat was barely tolerable. As if by cue, a young man walked up with a McDonald’s drink for Laura. His name was Bryan Vasquez, he said, and he was on a break from work. He didn’t like to see an older woman standing in the sun without respite, thus the cold sweet tea.
“I know you will think it was Jesus or whatever that brought this, but it wasn’t. It was just me being human,” he said. Bryan was a fresh-faced 35 years of age, slight-framed, with a flat-top ball cap and white-toed, black Converse sneakers. Laura was happy to welcome him.
A discussion organically ensued- Laura offering snippets of her past leading to her Pentecostal faith, and Bryan regaling bits of his.
“I was in the (Baptist) church 9 years,” he started. “I was actually studying to be a pastor. But I saw inconsistencies, and asked questions. A lot of the answers were cop-outs. Christians preach a message of love, but wasn’t it God who wiped out human beings in the Flood? How is that love? He supposedly told Moses he was sorry he had made humans at all. That means God makes mistakes. He’s a jerk. He reminds me of Trump!”
Bryan was passionate, with conviction that flashed through his dark eyes, but was never hostile and was acutely adept at listening. Laura was all heart and experience. Debating was clearly not her MO, but she never impugned Bryan’s train of thought, nor he hers, though the subject matter was intense.
Laura clutched her sign and its message: “God loves you. REPENT! Jesus is Coming Soon.”
The pair delved into opposing views intelligibly: considering the Council of Nicaea, the Catholic Apocrypha, the Koran, how light and darkness cannot abide together, Muslims and Islam and on-- one of the pair believing we are born inherently good, and the other believing inherently evil and in need of salvation.
When the discussion became exhaustive, Laura told the young man warmly, “We can agree to disagree. I still appreciate you and would love a hug.” Bryan gladly accepted.
“Did you know that taking her this tea would prompt a discussion like this?” I asked Bryan.
“I knew it would!” he said, with a broad smile, adjusting his cap. “I enjoy these debates.” He asked me where I stood with my own beliefs. With the wry grin of a pseudo-journalist, I told him I was somewhere between the two of them- the Pentecostal and the Agnostic- but always seeking.
“Maybe this today will help solidify some things for you,” he said.
We then each took our leave carrying away what we hoped to gain in the moment: Laura- her faith-based outreach sparked by a piece of poster-board; Bryan- his kindness to another and a chance to debate (and, I suspect, another rung on a personal ladder of faith seemingly more assembled than he realizes); me- the story behind the sign in the study of the human condition, and other unplanned trappings. Food for thought for all involved.
Signs, it seems, are everywhere.