Legendary baseball player and manager Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra (he got the nickname from sitting cross-legged in the dugout) said it well: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
So whatever happens in this 6-week-old year of 2012 is likely to surprise us in many ways, just as the world surprised us in 2011 and every year before. It would be nice to jump back in time and change the course of history, to stop the assassination of Abraham Lincoln or prevent a Hitler from assuming power or thwart the horror of the September 11 attacks, but such is the stuff of fantasy. We must, sadly, deal with what we’re presented.
So I can offer no “hot tips” for the stock market or the racetrack, no guidance on who’ll win the primaries and the general election this fall. I have my preferences, and you have yours, and neither of us may be happy in the end.
But as the late Wayne Hooper so stirringly wrote: “We have this hope.” God’s promise of redemption and restoration burns bright within our hearts, and will sustain us through dark times, comfort us during sad times, and remind us of even greater things to come during our happiest moments.
Major Sidney Cox, a famous Salvation Army composer, summed it up well:
“God’s love is wonderful,God’s love is wonderful,
Wonderful that he should give his Son to die for me;
God’s love is wonderful!”
That wonderful love is our best hope for 2012 . . . and for all the years beyond!
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Mark A. Kellner is news editor of the Adventist Review. This article was published February 9, 2012.
