What the Future Holds
Matthew 3:1-12
Illustration
by Leonard Mann

Have you seen ancient maps of unexplored portions of the world? Maps that portrayed the prevailing ideas of what lay beyond, the unexplored lands and the uncrossed seas? Maps from before the adventures of Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan? How grotesquely inaccurate those maps were! How vastly they differed from what the explorer eventually found! How fantastic were the notions the ancients had about what was out there - a dropping-off-place, mammoth sea serpents to swallow up ships. But as things turned out, it wasn't that way at all. You know, if Columbus had believed half the maps and legends of his time he would never have lifted an anchor!

Well, we are all traveling into the unexplored land, and we ought to be careful how we map it until we've traveled there. It is my faith that the future means to be friendly. There are no monsters waiting for us next week or next year. The future is not an enemy. If we see it that way and we start to do battle with it, I can tell you this: it's a battle we can never win. Let's not suspect it of standing over us with a club waiting for a chance to clobber us into the ground, or of lurking in the shadows to pounce upon us around the next dark corner. Future shores are there to explore. Lift your anchor.

CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Stars You Never Saw Before, by Leonard Mann