Maybe it's not "a belief in the power of brevity" prompting these signs. Maybe it's a panicky recognition that sometimes brevity is all you get: Tell us the meaning of life in no more than two words. If brevity is the soul of wit, perhaps desperation is the soul of brevity.
The people who write apocalyptic or consoling or hortatory messages on their houses and barns, or nail them to their fence posts, might well tell you stories, long stories if they had any opportunity at all to do so. They would weave for you tales of God's wrath or love, and of how their lives were transformed by the very knowledge that they now are pleased to share with you.
But they never get that chance. So they shout at us and draw large startling figures for us as we speed by. The writers stay put, or at least their signs do, while we zoom through town, nearly unrecognizable blurs who may not have sense enough to ask the only question that really matters: What must I do to be saved?
-Alan Jacobs, "Reading the Signs," First Things 176 (Oct. 2007), 25-28.
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