Happy New Year Brothers & Sisters,
2021 is here and all our problems are behind us!!
Oh wait… we only made it 6 days before we had our Black Swan Event of 2021. Have you read Nassim Taleb’s incredible 2007 best seller… Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable? A quick history… Black Swans, thought for centuries to be a fictional character like the Unicorns and Minotaurs, showed up as a reference to the “impossible” in stories and writing all over Europe.
Then all of a sudden Dutch navigator Willem de Vlamingh discovered and then pulled into Perth Harbour in Western Australia and to the absolute amazement of the entire crew sailed right through Black Swans on the water. Had you been back in London when that report arrived of the discovery of Black Swans… you would have never again assumed the impossible could not happen.
That is the theory of Black Swans… dangerously assuming the impossible will not happen. Taleb’s book uses an example as simple as 911 to help make his point. Think about it right now… is there anything difficult or amazing about an airplane flying into a building in your mind right now? No. We know it can happen… because we were alive the first time it did happen but as late as 7:00 am on September 11th, 2001… it was unthinkable.
Can the world ever be hit by a global pandemic? Yes, it can and we will even learn how to deal with it. Can the US Capitol Building be walked right into taken over, shutting down an actual US election? Sure it can… it took about 30 minutes.
Here is my point. Will we be opening for worship inside the Sanctuary pretty soon? Yes, we will. Will our Student Ministries UNITED Worship be in the Sanctuary this Sunday Night worshiping to live music again and having fun? Yes, they will. Have we built an entirely new website behind that same old web address you’ve been going to for years over this past 6 months and will “Go Live” this Sunday morning at 6 am… yes we certainly did! Will it all go as planned? No, because Black Swans exist. I lived in Perth Australia and they were a weekly sight.
What I learned from 2020 is that everything is so different now… but also nothing has changed in that whatever I want to happen does not mean it will. Black Swans are just birds now and Black Swan Events are just Wednesdays in January or Tuesdays in September.
One more example… Outdoor Worship on The Back Porch is getting frosted out this Sunday (forecast is 50% chance of snow) but amazing worship will happen online at 9:30 and 11:00 am on a brand new website (don’t worry you will click all the same buttons on your IPad or remote). So even this Sunday, everything is different but everything is the same.
See you online!
TD
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