With an eye
towards the future
First part

A story is told of a businessman who was permitted to have one wish come true. He wished for a newspaper two years in the future.

Miraculously the paper fell into his hands. Right away he turned to the business section. He made careful notes of the stocks that would yield him sure profits, and he thought, "My, I'll make quite a fortune!" As he closed the paper, his eyes glanced at the obituary section, and to his dismay, he saw his name. He had suffered a heart attack, and funeral arrangements were spelled out in detail.

This is of course a fanciful story-for the future is almost entirely hidded from our view. For this reason many people resort to palmistry, horoscopes and astrology. And as far as historical events happening in our dy are concerned, many look back to the ancient seer Nostradamus as having seen the current events in his mind's eye hundreds of years ago.

But of course the future is so clouded in uncertainty and mystery that many of us prefer to live our lives completely in the present. Robert Frost himself in one springtime, when the world was awash with flowers, wrote a lovely poem:

O give us pleasure in the flowers today; And give us not to think so far away As the uncertain harvest; keep us here All simply in the springtime of the year.

Robert Frost speaks of the future as the "uncertain harvest" which we should not think much about.

But should we not have an eye towards the future? As is so often said

in critical times like we should not forget life's future tense.

One thoughtful person once said:

We must regard the future as our friend, not our enemy;

Otherwise, we shall not be able to cope with life.

Or , as Tennessee Williams, the playwright, said:

The future is called 'perhaps'; which is the only possible way to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow it to scare you.

The most astonishing thing about the prophet Jeremiah was his intense faith in the future. And he demonstrated this faith when devastation after devastation, defeat after defeat, were threatening his country of Judah. When Babylon was about to annex Judah, and real estate was to be of no value at all, he did what was regarded as stupid. He bought a piece of land from his cousin who obviously no longer had any use for it.

(TO BE CONTINUED)*

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