With the coming of the new year, people do contemplate and worry about what the new year will bring. We're getting older, we may not have been satisfied or we were disappointed with 2011 . . . the list could go on as to why to dread the new year.
2011 has had its dread. The Reverend Harold Camping made his two predictions. Many are freaking out about the Mayan calendar ending in 2012.
Throughout my life, I have seen doom-sayer after doom-sayer make predictions and then crawl away after their 15 minutes of notoriety. Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, there were countless people engaged in studying and rehashing prophecy about who was the anti-christ and when Jesus was coming back.
I am one of those people who have decided not to get carried away about how or when the world is going to end . . . at least now. I find that too much emotion and not enough logic is behind all of those scares. Perhaps I am cynical--no one is perfect.
When it comes down to it, I have to take a few cues from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. There is nothing new under the sun--stuff comes around again. All economic forecasting is basically a form of saying the past is going to be the future. However, to me the most salient statement in Ecclesiastes is 7:14,
I think that the passages of the Bible indicate that people have always dreaded the future. Some generations had more to dread than others.
History is always a good teacher. While nothing is guaranteed, the world has kept turning.
Getting spiritual for a moment, there are a few things that believers in God can take comfort in. There is a future and Jesus Christ is coming back. When is a mystery, but it will happen. Until then you and I have a choice as to how we are to live--hopefully in the wisest possible way.
That being said, I blend in a secular statement from Wayne Dyer:
2011 has had its dread. The Reverend Harold Camping made his two predictions. Many are freaking out about the Mayan calendar ending in 2012.
Throughout my life, I have seen doom-sayer after doom-sayer make predictions and then crawl away after their 15 minutes of notoriety. Prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, there were countless people engaged in studying and rehashing prophecy about who was the anti-christ and when Jesus was coming back.
I am one of those people who have decided not to get carried away about how or when the world is going to end . . . at least now. I find that too much emotion and not enough logic is behind all of those scares. Perhaps I am cynical--no one is perfect.
When it comes down to it, I have to take a few cues from the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. There is nothing new under the sun--stuff comes around again. All economic forecasting is basically a form of saying the past is going to be the future. However, to me the most salient statement in Ecclesiastes is 7:14,
When times are good, be happy; but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future. (NIV)
I think that the passages of the Bible indicate that people have always dreaded the future. Some generations had more to dread than others.
History is always a good teacher. While nothing is guaranteed, the world has kept turning.
Getting spiritual for a moment, there are a few things that believers in God can take comfort in. There is a future and Jesus Christ is coming back. When is a mystery, but it will happen. Until then you and I have a choice as to how we are to live--hopefully in the wisest possible way.
That being said, I blend in a secular statement from Wayne Dyer:
No comments:
Post a Comment