Predicting the Future

 

Several things have happened lately to remind me how hard it is to predict the future.

I recently watched a 2013 rerun of Shark Tank where an entrepreneur pitched a cell phone app that interacted with bar codes and QR codes. Mark Cuban passed on it partly because, as he put it, “QR codes are on their way out.” Fast forward nine years, and he was so wrong.

This past September I received an assignment to write the February 2025 devotions for a devotional magazine called Portals of Prayer. Yes, you read the date correctly. I submitted an outline earlier this year, and the devotions themselves are due in January 2023—two years before they will be published. Scripture doesn’t change and a good devotion should be timeless, so that part is okay.

Unfortunately, writers are not as timeless. I was asked to submit a short biography with the devotions, and who knows how much will change before the publication date. I could even be dead by then. So I assume they ask for an update shortly before the devotions are published.

Knowing how far in advance the devotions are normally assigned, I was surprised in July to notice references to COVID-19 and its aftermath. My best guess is that the person who was originally assigned those devotions didn’t meet his or her deadline for some reason so the publishers had to look elsewhere—either by making a rush assignment or by moving up devotions that had already been submitted. Regardless, it appears that something happened that the publishers hadn’t predicted.

In this world, there is very little we can count on. Even death and taxes have their uncertainties.

But one thing is predictable. This world will end and then the judgment. Those who know God will go to heaven, and everyone else will go to hell.

I’m glad I’ll be in the first group.

__________

The image at the top of this post is Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment.”  I took the photo on a 2018 trip to Rome. The original is in the Sistine Chapel, and no photography is allowed inside. I didn’t have to violate the rules to get this picture, however. The Vatican had placed a reproduction in the courtyard for visitors to photograph, instead.