Every fall we start to think about the upcoming winter. In Minnesota you know it is coming and you just wonder how bad it will be. In the Charlotte area you wonder if you will get any snow at all. Enter the winter forecaster: the wooly-bear caterpillar. The prediction is where it is black, the winter will be harsh and where it is tan colored, the winter will be mild. This little guy is predicting a harsh beginning and ending and a mild middle of the winter.
Meteorologists may disagree with this forecast, but it is still fun to speculate using folklore from previous generations when we did not have the technology of today.
But why are we so interested in trying to know the future? When I was in high school Mr. Ramsey said if he had only one wish it would be to receive tomorrow’s newspaper today. Today his wish today would be tomorrow’s internet news today. Why? Mr. Ramsey said he would go to the racetrack or call his stockbroker and make a large “investment.” Without the newspaper it would be a gamble. He did not like gambling; he liked certainty. An undertaker once said he wished he knew the place where he was going to die. When asked why, he said he would never go near the place.
We want to know the future because we think it would be easier to walk by sight than to walk by faith. But would walking by sight be any easier? If we worry when we walk by faith, how much more would we worry if we knew tomorrow that we would be in an automobile accident or receive a diagnosis of a terminal disease? St. Paul says in I Corinthians 13:12, “At present we see indistinctly…at present I know partially.” When God called Abraham to leave his county without detail, scripture simply says in Genesis 12:4, “Abraham went as the Lord directed him.” Abraham walked by faith and St. Paul uses Abraham in the book of Romans as our example of how we should walk in faith. Saul in the Old Testament tried to find out the future by sorcery and it did not work out well for him.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we are to walk by faith. Father Solanus Casey said, “Let us thank God ahead of time for whatever he foresees is pleasing to him.” The hardest part for us to accept is the word whatever. Yet if it pleases God, why would we not want it?
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