After going bankrupt in 1998, the Psychic Friends Network relaunched as a public company in 2012, promising to be “bigger, bolder, and better than ever.” In their investor presentation, they promised to “leverage an iconic brand name using new technologies and social media to re-establish Psychic Friends Network as the industry leader for daily horoscopes and psychic advice.” The company's website advertised, “We all want to know what our future holds… For centuries, great leaders have sought and found the vital psychic edge, and now, so can you!”
Their business plan forecasted $64 million in net income by 2015. But ironically, the first page of its investor presentation included this cautionary note: “Undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because Psychic Friends Network can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct” (Jonathan Weil, “The Psychic Friends Network Cannot Predict Its Future,” Bloomberg, 10-19-12; www.PreachingToday.com).
So much for trusting their services. The point is, psychic, or otherwise, no one knows the future, so there are no assurances. And that has people very worried especially in these uncertain times.
Just last year (2022), Chapman University surveyed adults on 95 fears and discovered that as high as 85 percent of Americans live with a sense of impending doom. The top 10 fears of those who listed themselves as afraid or very afraid are as follows:
#1. Corrupt government officials 62.1%
#2. People I love becoming seriously ill 60.2%
#3. Russia using nuclear weapons 59.6%
#4. People I love dying 58.1%
#5. The U.S. involved in another world war 56.0%
#6. Pollution of drinking water 54.5%
#7. Not having enough money for the future 53.7%
#8. Economic/financial collapse 53.7%
#9. Pollution of oceans, rivers, and lakes 52.5%
#10. Biological warfare 51.5% (The Top 10 Fears in America 2022 Did your fears make the list? Chapman University, 10/14/22; www.PreachingToday.com).
Wow! If I were afraid of even half of those things, I’d want to crawl into a hole and give up on life. And that’s what some people do. But God calls believers to face an unknown future differently. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Ecclesiastes 11, Ecclesiastes 11, where the Bible gives very clear guidance on what to do when you do not know.
Ecclesiastes 11:1-2 Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth (ESV).
That phrase, “you do not know,” shows up four times in the first six verses—here in verse 2, twice in verse 5, and once in verse 6. So, what do you do when you do not know the future? Well, you don’t crawl into a hole and give up on life. No! You get out there and…
WORK DILIGENTLY.
Labor industriously. Do your job thoroughly.
Since life is risky and you do not know what disasters are ahead, invest broadly. Don’t “put all your eggs in one basket,” so to speak, but spread your ventures around.
Send out those trading ships. Sure, a storm may sink one or two of them, but eventually there will be a return on your investment. Even though the ancient Jews feared the sea, Solomon built a fleet of ships anyway. He loaded and sent them with goods to trade, and “once every three years the fleet of ships… used to come bringing gold, silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks,” according to 1 Kings 10 (1 Kings 10:22).
Now, you may not have a fleet of ships to send to various ports around the world, but you do have various interests in which to invest your time and money. Don’t just settle on one, because that one venture may come to a disastrous end. Instead, invest your time and money in various interests, so that at least one of them gives you a return on your investment.
Don’t let the fear of failure limit your options. Instead, let the fear of failure motivate you to expand your options. Invest broadly.
And then work regularly. Don’t wait for the perfect time to invest your energy. Get to work now and keep on working until you see success.
Ecclesiastes 11:3-4 If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap (ESV).
If a farmer waits until the wind is just right, he will never plant any seeds. And if he waits until the clouds are all gone, he will never harvest any crops. Don’t wait for optimum conditions to start working. Get to work now and keep on working until you see success.
Ecclesiastes 11:5-6 As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good (ESV).
Babies are mysterious. God is even more mysterious. So work from morning until evening, because you don’t know which efforts God will prosper.
In the movie Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating, an English instructor at an elite preparatory school, asks his students to rip out the “Introduction to Poetry” essay from their literature textbooks. Take a look (show Dead Poets Society, Rip It Out Scene).
The essayist had instructed students in a method of grading poems on a sliding scale, complete with the use of a grid, thus reducing art for the heart into arithmetic for the head. The students looked around at each other in confusion as their teacher dismissed the essay as “excrement” and ordered them to rip those pages from their books. And at their teacher's loud prodding, the students began to rip. Dr. Keating paced the aisle with a trash can and reminded the students that poetry is not algebra, not songs on American Bandstand that can be rated on a scale from 1 to 10, but rather pieces of art that plunge the depths of the heart to stir vigor in men and woo women.
Then, after collecting the ripped-out pages in a trash can, Mr. Keating quotes Walt Whitman:
Oh me! Oh life!
Of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless,
Of cities fill’d with the foolish…
What good amid these, O me, O life?
The answer: That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on,
And you may contribute a verse.
That the powerful play goes on,
And you may contribute a verse.
Then, Mr. Keating asks, “What will your verse be?” (Dead Poets Society, 1989, directed by Peter Weir and written by Tom Schulman, starring Robin Williams).
God is the author of the play, and we know bits and pieces of that play. We know how it starts and how it ends, because God told us in His word, but there is much about the middle we don’t know. God’s ways are mysterious, but that should inspire awe and motivate action. So stop trying to figure out God’s ways and just work on “your verse” in the play.
Donald Miller, in his book Blue Like Jazz says, “Too much of our time is spent trying to chart God on a grid, and too little is spent allowing our hearts to feel awe. By reducing Christian spirituality to formulas, we deprive our hearts of wonder.”
Then he goes on to say: “When I think about the complexity of the Trinity, the three-in-one God, my mind cannot understand, but my heart feels wonder in abundant satisfaction. It is as though my heart, in the midst of its euphoria, is saying to my mind, ‘There are things you cannot understand, and you must learn to live with this.’ Not only must you learn to live with this, you must learn to enjoy this” (Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, Nelson, 2003, p.205; www.PreachingToday.com).
That’s what you do when you don’t know. Live with the mystery—Work diligently—and enjoy it. Find joy in life. Rejoice! Throw a party, but…
CELEBRATE RESPONSIBLY.
Celebrate life with the knowledge that God will judge someday. Enjoy life now before you die.
Ecclesiastes 11:7-8 Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity (ESV).
Light and darkness are metaphors for life and death in the Bible. So rejoice in the light, because days of darkness are coming. Celebrate when you’re alive, because death is coming when there will be no more opportunity to celebrate in this life. You cannot show people on this earth how wonderful God is when you’re dead (Psalm 115:10). So do it now, before it is eternally too late!
Several years ago (2005) National Geographic identified three regions of the world where people have consistently shown longer life spans: Okinawa (Japan), Sardinia (an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea), and Loma Linda, California. Dan Buettner, a researcher and explorer involved with the article, decided to do a follow-up study three years later to determine if there were more regions they had overlooked. His team found an abnormally large number of people living past 90—even into their 100s—on the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica.
Intrigued, Buettner and a large research team made their way to the region to discover what factors led to a longer life for these people. They found that their longevity is due in part to diet, sun exposure, and source of water, but they also found the following factors to be crucial in the survival of the people:
• The people on the Nicoya Peninsula have a strong sense of purpose. They "feel needed and want to contribute to a greater good."
• They choose to focus on the family. Persons over 100 years of age in this region "tend to live with their families…. Children or grandchildren provide support and a sense of purpose and belonging."
• They have strong social networks. Their neighbors visit frequently, and they all seem to know the value of listening, laughing, and appreciating what they have.
• They know the value of hard work. They even manage to "find joy in everyday physical chores." &
• They understand and appreciate their historical roots and spiritual traditions. In essence, they know their story (Dan Buettner, "Costa Rica Secrets to a Long Life," AARP magazine, May/June 2008, p. 69; www.PreachingToday.com).
To put it simply—the people on the Nicoya Peninsula have learned to enjoy life, celebrating it with their family and friends and even at work. You do the same. Enjoy life before you die.
But enjoy life with the knowledge that God will judge. Have fun, but don’t be foolish.
Ecclesiastes 11:9-10 Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity (ESV).
Have fun while you’re young, but know that God will judge you when you are old. You will reap what you sow, so celebrate within the boundaries of God’s Word.
Several years ago, “This American Life” on Public Radio told the story of Nauru, a tiny, isolated Pacific island east of New Guinea and 1,200 miles from any sizable landmass. Around the year 1900, two scientists from the Pacific Islands Company began to study what they believed to be a piece of petrified wood picked up on Nauru. But instead of a fossilized rock, they uncovered the richest phosphate ore ever identified to that time—a discovery so valuable it plunged Nauru violently into the industrial era.
During the years that followed, Europeans and Asians colonized the country in pursuit of financial gain. They turned the island into a strip mine. Nauru achieved independence in 1968, but rather than taking responsibility for the land, the Nauruan government continued the mining practices that had, by then, brutalized the island.
By the early 1980s, Nauru boasted the world's highest per capita income, but its prosperity didn't last long. Midway through the 1990s, Nauru's wealth was gone: embezzled by corrupt financial managers, gambled away on risky investments, and squandered on extravagant luxuries.
With the money gone, the Nauruans can now see the effects of their short-sighted decisions. More than 80 percent of the island is a mined-out ruin, unable to offer the infrastructure or natural resources needed to support a nation-state. At one time boasting the world’s highest per capita income, a recent (2018) U.N. report showed that a quarter of Nauruans live in “basic need” poverty, too poor for the cost of food and access to necessities such as clean water, health care and education.
“When you're on Nauru,” says reporter Jack Hitt, “there's a palpable sense of shame at what they've done… The Nauruans literally sold off their homeland for a pot of wealth which is now lost” (This American Life: The Middle of Nowhere, Public Radio International, 12-5-03, episode 253; www.PreachingToday.com).
There comes a time when the party is over, so go ahead and party. But celebrate in a way that you will have no regrets when it is all said and done.
By the way, when you walk the path God has laid out for you, you enjoy life a whole lot more.
In a prayer to the Lord, David declared, “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).
So commit your life to God. Trust Christ with your life, who died for your sins and rose again. Then experience that “fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore.” For God is not about erasing your fun. On the contrary, He wants to enhance your fun.
For example, in 1994, the University of Chicago did an exhaustive study on sexuality in America, based on interviews with 3,432 adults. It became a book titled Sex in America: A Definitive Survey by Robert Michael, John Gagnon, Edward Laumann, and Gina Kolata. Here is what the study found (and I quote): “Everything people think about how sex works in America is far from the truth.”
Based on American TV and American commercials, you would think the hottest sex is single people in the swinging lifestyle. What they actually found is that those who are the most satisfied sexually are (quote) “people in monogamous, marital relationships with orthodox conservative views, often that are often highly religious” (Robert Michael, John Gagnon, Edward Laumann, and Gina Kolata, Sex in America: A Definitive Survey, Little Brown & Co., 1994).
Doesn’t that blow you away? But it just goes to show you that God’s way is the best way. So, go ahead and enjoy life, but do it within the boundaries of God’s Word.
That’s what you do when you do not know. You work diligently and celebrate responsibly.
At the 2013 commencement speech at MIT, Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox said:
“When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis ball: Their eyes go a little crazy, the leash snaps and they go bounding off, plowing through whatever gets in the way… So it's not about pushing yourself; it's about finding your tennis ball, the thing that pulls you. So what is your tennis ball?” (Network World staff, “Dropbox CEO Drew Houston's 2013 MIT commencement address transcript”" Network World, 6-7-13; www.Preaching Today.com).
What pulls you these days? Pursue that with everything you’ve got and enjoy life even in the face of an uncertain future. Above all, pursue God, who does know the future and has your best interests at heart.
