Any Day Now Series

[Hold up cell phone.]

Yep … we talked a little bit about this handy device last week. More accurately, we talked about one of the apps … the GPS. But there is another little handy app that I use all the time to help me plan my day … The Weather Channel’s Ten Day Weather app which, as the name says, predicts the weather for the Canton area for the next 10 days. Yesterday it said that we had a 95% chance of rain. Today it says 100%. Does anyone here know what it means when the weather forecast says that there’s a 40 or 50 percent chance of rain? It doesn’t mean that we have a 40 or 50 percent chance out of a hundred that it will rain. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it means that 40 or 50 percent of our area WILL receive rain … the question is, which 40 or 50%. So … the question is not “if” it will rain but “where” it will rain, amen?

Predictions about the weather are useful when it comes to planning our day, even though we know that predicting the weather is, well, a hit-or-miss proposition, right? Still, we tend to listen to the weather report or look it up on-line and we tend to look up at the sky and make the most educated guess that we can as we head outdoors and into our day. Whether it rains or not, we’re prepared … most of the time. Sometimes it catches us off guard. But there’s one time we don’t want to get caught off guard.

“The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Jesus they asked Him to show them a sign from Heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:1-3).

So, here’s the thing. On the one hand, we’re always looking for signs of the “end time.” People thought that World War I was the beginning of the end times spoken about by Jesus and John in the Book of Revelation. Some thought it was World War II. Then it was the Cold War. Today it seems like we have plenty of “signs” … the pandemic, the trucker strike up north. Now it looks like the conflict in the Ukraine could spark a world war. When the Disciples asked Jesus for a sign of His coming and the end of the age, He told them: “Beware that no one leads you astray” … we have a lot of that today don’t we? … “For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah!’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” We will hear of wars and rumors of wars … nation will rise against nation … kingdom against kingdom … famine and earthquakes … but we are not to be alarmed because the end is not yet. Which leads me to the flip side of seeking for signs.

It’s a weird thing. We check the weather forecast all the time but the running joke is that weather forecasting is nothing more than an educated guess and that they are wrong almost as often as they are right … and this can lead us to doubt the veracity of forecast, am I right? Take our weather recently. A few weeks back the local forecasters were warning us about a huge snowstorm coming our way … nothing … nothing worth worrying about anyways. Then, about a week later, they predicted another snowstorm and, well, frankly, I didn’t really buy it … and it turned out we got a pretty good amount of snow.

This can have some pretty serious consequences … like not preparing for a snowstorm … and we know that, so we prepare anyways. I’ve been through this many, many times in Florida. Every year they predict that Florida or the Gulf Coast region is going to get slammed by a hurricane or several hurricanes. The watch begins. The models and predictions are literally all over the map … could hit here, could hit there … could be a category 5 … thousands could die … and then it never comes … it suddenly changes direction … it never really organizes or gains strength … it goes somewhere else. And so, we rush to the store, we stock up and prepare, but we don’t put much stock in it because we’ve been down this road so many times and had nothing happen. We become, well, anesthetized … skeptical … we don’t take the warnings as seriously as we did the first time we went through this. Or, we’re so used to it and we have permanent supplies and emergency equipment on hand so that we feel safe, prepared and we don’t get as worried or scared or as worked up as we used to.