{"id":1391,"date":"2022-02-17T09:54:54","date_gmt":"2022-02-17T14:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1391"},"modified":"2022-02-17T09:54:54","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T14:54:54","slug":"predicting-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/02\/17\/predicting-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Predicting the Future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A few years ago, Laura Lee of The Futurist<\/em> magazine catalogued some of the worst expert predictions in history.  They included the following:

\u201cLaw will be simplified [over the next century].  Lawyers will have diminished, and their fees will have been vastly curtailed.\u201d  <\/em>Better luck next century.  That prediction was written by journalist Junius Henri Browne in 1893.

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what he does, he will never amount to anything.\u201d  <\/em>That was the assured prediction of Albert Einstein\u2019s teacher to Einstein\u2019s father in 1895.

\u201cIt would appear we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology.\u201d  <\/em>That was the estimation of computer scientist John von Neumann in 1949.

\u201cThe Japanese don\u2019t make anything the people in the U.S. would want.\u201d  <\/em>In 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles failed to foresee that I would be grateful for the Toyota and the Mazda in my garage this morning.

\u201cNuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within ten years.\u201d  <\/em>Alex Lewyt of the Lewyt Vacuum Cleaner Company said that in 1955.

\u201cBefore man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles.  We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.\u201d  <\/em>That was the confident prediction of Arthur Summerfield, U.S. Postmaster General in 1959.

And finally, \u201cI predict the Internet\u2026will go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.\u201d  <\/em>That prediction was made by Bob Metcalfe of InfoWorld<\/em> magazine in 1995.

There\u2019s something marvelous about being an armchair quarterback and watching the experts get a few things wrong \u2013 until we enter the realm of religion. 

That\u2019s where we most crave precision about the future \u2013 certainty about what is going to happen to us tomorrow and what will be true of us at the end of life. 

Followers of Jesus have long proclaimed that he is the foremost expert on reality.  That includes the crucial subject of how we enter and sustain a relationship with God.

So, according to Jesus, what predictions can we make about the future?  Here\u2019s a pair of them:

First, if you don\u2019t think God is approachable, available or worth knowing, you will not be drawn into a life of seeking God.  All of us carry around a picture of God that vastly affects the way we think about ourselves and about the universe.  Jesus declares that if we picture God the way he does \u2013 as a Father who is waiting to welcome us home after years of looking for unconditional love in all the wrong places \u2013 our spiritual life will be revolutionized.

Second, if we don\u2019t intentionally make time<\/em> to be with God, we will never accidentally find time<\/em> to be with God.  Spiritual vitality doesn\u2019t just happen. 

Every spiritual tradition confidently makes this prediction:  Even if we know of<\/u><\/em> God, we will never actually come to know<\/u><\/em> God unless we make a decision \u2013 in fact, a series of decisions \u2013 that will lead us into spending time with God as a way of life.

Of course, you may choose to believe that\u2019s not true.

In which case, I\u2019ve got a nuclear-powered vacuum cleaner you can buy.  Cheap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, Laura Lee of The Futurist magazine catalogued some of the worst expert predictions in history.  They included the following: \u201cLaw will be simplified [over the next century].  Lawyers will have diminished, and their fees will have been vastly curtailed.\u201d  Better luck next century.  That prediction was written by journalist Junius Henri Browne in 1893. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1392,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[404],"class_list":["post-1391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-time-with-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1393,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1391\/revisions\/1393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}