The Coming Winter

First things first: the sky is not falling, at least not yet. If the sky is falling, then it's too late for any of this to do you much good. Things may seem bad, but chances are, you have time to make well-thought-out decisions on how you and your family should be making your preparations before anything significant happens. You have time to prioritize, save, and most importantly, pray through the decisions you are making. You may feel a sense of urgency, but don't let that overwhelm your responsibility to act prudently. We are under God's care as long as we don't decide to take things into our own hands and act as if we are not.

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Sometimes, bad things just happen. Because of the broken state of humanity and a cursed world that is unpredictable at best, we live with the constant reality that things are messed up, and we never know what's going to happen. There are accidents, disasters, tragedies, and, of course, the universal inevitabilities, such as death, that we all understand are inescapable. We all know that bad things happen, and we can't really explain or predict them. We know that someone we are close to might become seriously sick or injured. We know that natural disasters happen and that none of us lives in an area completely immune to them. Tragedies happen. Wars happen. And, as time moves on, powers shift within countries, societies degrade, and economies collapse. Calamity, after all, is just a part of life.

As this is being written, banking systems around the world are faltering, and entire continents are on the verge of slipping into chaos yet again. The Middle East is mired in growing violence and unrest, Europe is floundering, and old adversaries are gaining strength as they begin to impose their own agendas on an ever-weakening Western world. America is teetering and trying to grasp at anything to steady herself. Some say that we are looking at, for the first time since the Civil War or the Great Depression, the setting for a collapse of our economy and perhaps even our society. We all recognize a growing unrest in our country, and, while no one is exactly sure what the future holds, a sense of foreboding increases every day. People are beginning to feel in their guts that something is very wrong. We see the abuse of power, growing debt, ubiquitous greed, and moral degradation of our society; they all stand as warnings of a dark day in the future—a day when we must face the consequences of decades of bad policies, twisted truths, and fading virtues.

It shouldn't shock us, though, that our country and society are struggling. Think of it like this: every society that has come before us has collapsed, and every economy that has come before us has failed; in the six thousand years of recorded history, there has not been a single exception. All the great ancient civilizations are gone: the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Byzantines, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, and the list goes on and on. The Bible makes it clear: the world is fallen, and every society that has been and ever will be will suffer the consequences of original sin. Original sin, apart from God's intervention, rots the human heart and creeps into every culture, where it quietly eats away like a cancer at even our noblest of endeavors.

So, with fallen humanity as our constant and history as our reference, we can logically make the statement that, for us, it's not a matter of if our society and economy collapse, but when. This is not a statement of gloom and doom. It's simply a matter of fact; we know that our current system can't last forever, and a collapse must occur at some point. Without divine intervention, all of this is inevitable. Perhaps now is the time when it all comes crashing down, perhaps not. I, for one, sincerely hope and pray that God draws us back to Him. I pray that our country experiences another Great Awakening, repents, and is once again able to stand as a beacon of goodness and grace to the world. I also hope and pray that we avoid the cliff at the end of the long, slippery slope we are currently sliding on.

With all that being said, whether the "big one" catches up with our generation or not, one thing that we can be certain of is that there will always be smaller disasters that we will face. You will experience a day when you will wake up and find yourself surprised and a little fearful at the headlines. At some point, your home will lose power in a storm, or someone in your household will lose thir job, or any of a million other unknown calamities and mishaps will occur. We don't really want to face anything completely unprepared, and common sense tells us that we should be prepared for these smaller all-too-common events. It is in the preparation for these smaller events that we can begin to understand what it would take to be prepared for something larger.

Think of it like this: a hundred years ago, our grandparents and great-grandparents would prepare for the winter. Whether there was snow or not, there was always a winter, a time when survival was dependent on their skills and resourcefulness and on what they had stored in their pantries and barns. Winter was a time of cold and darkness and uncertainty. There were no Mega-Marts, grocery chains, or convenience stores where they could run on a Tuesday afternoon for milk and bread. Everything they needed was thoughtfully prepared in advance. They prepared for winter during summer, when there was a harvest and plenty of resources. They prepared for hard times when times were easier. Times are easy now, but we see the storm clouds on the horizon and feel the change in the air. A metaphorical "winter" is coming. Wouldn't our forefathers think we were foolish for not being ready when we have so much at our disposal?

Perspective

The Bible describes a period of time in humanity's future as, "the last days." It is a time period of ever-increasing chaos leading up to the end of the world as we know it. I grew up hearing that we were living in the last days; my parents did, too. Every Christian generation since the ascension of Christ appears to have believed that they were living in the last days, and many of them saw much darker days than the ones we are in. Imagine how the early Christians felt before the Roman Empire became Christian. These early Christians were arrested, tortured, and martyred on a daily basis; surely their belief that the end was near was valid.

World War II is another great example of a time that was much more bleak than ours. Hitler, with world domination as a goal, decimated much of Europe and attempted to exterminate the Jewish people and any Christians who opposed him; certainly those appeared as though they were the last days. We are indeed living in dark times. However, if the United States of America continues to decline and ultimately falls, it may not...