Hi, welcome to Redeem the Commute. I’m Ryan, your host for the daily challenges.  This week’s topic is part of our series called EPIC where we’ve been exploring how Jesus is found throughout the Old Testament part of the Bible. We’re reading some epic old stories from the Old Testament, some of which you might have heard before, some of which might be new to you. But our hope is that in each of them we’ll see how they’re part of one big epic story: the story of the Bible, the story of the world, God’s story.

Our daily challenges are meant to help you explore what it means to follow Jesus, even if you don’t have a lot of time. That’s why we have a rhythm that keeps us in sync, even if we’re not a community that meets together in person regularly. This means every Monday we introduce the week’s idea. Every Tuesday we study it in the Bible. Every Wednesday we see how that challenges and transforms our thinking on the topic. Thursdays we try to apply and live it out. Friday is a day for prayer and reflection before we take a rest on Saturday, and Sundays we meet together with other Christians in community.

How much differently would life be  if we could accurately see and plan for the future?  Think of all the areas of life where we have to operate with educated guesswork to make decisions.  When we can’t predict events, we can look for signs that suggest what might happen, but this is famously inaccurate.

The weather is the most obvious example – we can rely on many signs to predict a coming storm – colour change in the sky, a smell of humidity in the air, a migraine or joint pain, and more.  Meteorologists have all kinds of signs to watch – radar patterns, barometers, satellite images and more.  But storms are dynamic, changing all the time, and sometimes pass us by even after all those signs.

We do this for other areas of life, as well.  Think of the regular discussion in Canadian media about signs and data related to the housing market – will it crash, and if so, when?  Few people agree on which signs point to what kind of future, but many try to make predictions either way.

This week we’ll study a story in the Old Testament where a prophet described a vision, full of symbols and signs that are hard to interpret.  But they did point to some future events, and gave people hope and a plan in uncertain times.

Question: What signs and data do you follow to make plans for the future?