“Son of man, the Israelites are saying, ‘The vision he sees is for many years from now, and he prophesies about the distant future.’ – Ezekiel 12:27

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 2, 2017) Ezekiel 12

These are the global issues that tend to keep me awake at night. I worry (not quite worry, but more than wonder) about world peace. As I write these words, there are so many global hotspots that could go very wrong. The Islamic State is still a real threat, and flesh and blood people are still suffering under their rule. Kim Jong-un in North Korea is an unpredictable presence in the area, and he has a fixation on nuclear weapons and the ability to cause damage to those that he believes oppose him. He appears to have no concern for the future or the welfare of his people. He is a sociopath who is aspiring to be a world power – and he will do anything to make that dream come true. Tensions between the United States and Russia are never a good thing as far as world peace is concerned. And Iran is a problem that is just over the horizon.

I worry about debt, both the debt of the nations and the personal debt that too many of us seem to be carrying. J Wellington Wimpy (in the Popeye cartoon) was always saying "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," a catchphrase that is currently used to indicate financial irresponsibility. But the problem is that Tuesday is coming. And too many of us have eaten way more hamburgers than our Tuesday paychecks can afford. At best, we are passing off a financial debt that someone, most likely our children or our grandchildren, are going to have to pay. At worst, our fiscal irresponsibility is something that will eventually destroy civilization as we know it. A total financial collapse now would be much worse than what was experienced during the Great Depression. And our own economic incompetence will be the reason for our downfall.

I worry about the environment. Again, this is something that has very real effects on the lives of our children and grandchildren. Where I live, in the middle of winter when the mercury dips past twenty and thirty below, global warming sounds like a good thing. But we still have our collective heads in the sand when it comes to climate change. And part of the problem is that there will be a tipping point, a point of no return, back from which we will not be able to come. The result of passing that point will mean that the earth will, at some time in the future, no longer be able to provide a habitable environment in which we can live. And once we pass the tipping point, there won’t be anything that we can do to change that future.

The problem with every single one of these things that keep me up at night is that they are all somewhere out in the nebulous future. And there are voices around me that say that these events might not even happen. But maybe the better question to ask is how much are we willing to bet that these things will never occur? Are the lives of our children and grandchildren worth the discomfort of trying to change what we can today to give them a better tomorrow?

As the sixth-century B.C.E dawned, apparently the same questions were being asked in Israel. All that Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and their contemporaries were saying were telling the people was going to happen was far in the future. Maybe these events wouldn’t even happen. The people were betting on never rather than going through the discomfort of changing their behavior.

But God was about to speak. These things that you are worried might happen in the future are going to happen now. You waited too long. The tipping point has been passed. The time for prevention is gone, now is the time to prepare for what is your new normal.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 13