Photo courtesy of Austin Chan / Unsplash

Are you old enough to remember when we used a real dictionary to look up a word’s spelling or definition? I used to get lost in the dictionary because I’d find other interesting words and would jump from one to another.

Well, something similar happens to me now when I’m searching for a photo to use with my blog posts. My favorite site is Unsplash.com. This is a wonderful, searchable site under the Creative Commons license which permits anyone to use their photos for any purpose, personal or commercial. You don’t even have to give the site or the photographer credit, although I try to do that consistently.

Sometimes a photo makes me laugh because of the randomness, like this one. Because, silly me, I thought donkeys were on the right.

Photo courtesy of Darren Coleshill / Unsplash

Sometimes a photo is thought-provoking:

Photo courtesy of Riley McCullough / Unsplash

When’s the last time you found something so amazing with no strings attached?

Because I recently heard it, I was thinking about the rock song Signs by the Canadian group Five Man Electrical Band. It was originally released as a B side to another song in 1970 that went nowhere. They re-released it in 1971 as the A side, and it took off, eventually going gold.

I guess you could say the group got a sign that they shouldn’t give up on their Signs song.

I think the funniest sign I’ve seen was at a national park many years ago. It said, “Please report all irregularities to the Warden.” In and of itself, that is not funny. The fact that it was on a restroom door made me double over in laughter.

Sometimes we say aloud, “God, just give me a sign that I should do this.” And then (if we’re perhaps trying to nudge God’s decision into the one we think it should be) we try to interpret things that happen as the actual sign that God is giving us the green light. Or wait…maybe it’s red. Perhaps just yellow, indicating we should wait.

It can be confusing.

So if you want to mellow out and look at lovely or intriguing or funny images instead, just go to one of the sites noted above and search a topic. Any topic.

WARNING: Norma Thatcher cannot be held responsible for any time frittered away by her readers.

And finally, here’s a sign from me to all my readers who are generous enough to save some of their time to read what I write:

Photo courtesy of Ali Yahya / Unsplash