Unforeseen?

 

Yesterday's "Pearls Before Swine" strip had me laughing.  Click the image to be taken to a larger view at the cartoon's Web page.

It reminded me of the credulous among us, those who believe in what their stars foretell, or what their biorhythms forecast, or what a fortune-teller predicts for them, or even in the veracity of Chinese fortune cookies.  Why they bother, I have no idea, and I don't think they do either.  It's just more comforting for them to believe such nonsense.  There are an astonishingly large proportion of them amongst us, too.

I - and, I'm sure, many others who've learned in the "School of Hard Knocks" or the "University of Life" - understand that life is going to happen to you whether you like it or not.  No matter how well you educate and prepare yourself, the unexpected is going to arrive sooner or later, and pitchfork you into a situation you could not have predicted and can't control.  Even worse, if it's something you did predict and prepare for, you may still find that it's too big to handle.  I've seen at first hand how a well-trained and -prepared military unit can still run headlong into something it can't handle, and be trounced by the enemy with massive casualties, to the point that it disintegrates and ceases to exist as an effective, organized formation.  They did all they could to be ready . . . but it wasn't enough, and what they ran into was even better prepared and equipped and motivated and trained and ready than they were.

Life happens.  You can't foretell what's coming, and you can't control it beyond in the most general sense (i.e. you can prepare to survive starvation by moving to where there's plenty of food, but you may still eat spoiled or poisoned food that will kill you as surely as starvation).  God never promised us a life of ease and comfort.  He only promised us grace to cope with life.  Big difference.

Oh - and don't bother to pay a fortune-teller to predict your future.  Waste of time and money.  If you really want to do that, pay me instead.  I'll write a nice fictional prediction for you that won't come true, but will be as useful to you as a charlatan's pretensions - and even more comforting.

Peter

(EDITED TO ADD:  As if on cue, here's a newspaper headline I read just a few minutes ago, less than ten minutes after this article was published:  "Fake psychic faces up to 280 years in prison for defrauding elderly Americans in $175M scheme".)