One day recently I woke up, looked in the mirror, and realized that I had literally become a graybeard. My lovely wife of many, many calendars tells me she likes how it looks (when neatly trimmed) and that my wisdom had finally started to show. Forever my inspiration, that girl.
These years have started to tumble by ever more quickly. The gray, the paunch, and the creases around my eyes are a constant reminder of the lengthening road at my heels. But where the physical wear and tear manifests, so too does the mental, emotional, and spiritual progress become more evident. Wisdom and true understanding do require deeper roots.
In the Preparedness and Intelligence Fields
I'm a Cold Warrior ... intell officer from way back. I was trained as an analyst by the best of the best more than 35 years ago. At the time, I was pretty much still a kid. But the wheels of time pushed and pulled. I learned and grew and moved on in life, usually two steps forward one step back ... all the while bestowing valuable experiences in various, mostly insignificant corners of the big, round world.
Recognition that civilization as we knew it had crested the hill and was on the backside of the shining mountain came very early. Some of that early recognition was "insider" info, I guess. And soon thereafter came the understanding that there really was no such thing as a benevolent government out there ready to keep us from hurting ourselves. Eventually I even came around to seeing the danger that growing behemoth was posing to freedom.
Needless to say--crisis preparedness grew to be a personal passion. Then it became an outreach effort and finally a very fulfilling business operation as well.
All of this background is to simply set the stage for what I want to say very clearly today to those who have yet to see the warning signs all around us.
Alarm
Loud and clear--in all my years of advising high-ranking military and corporate officers, and customers, peers, and others seeking my insight as an analyst, consultant, business partner, or friend, I have never before been so acutely alert to the imminent dangers right on our doorstep today. "Our" meaning any and all of us living today on this planet earth.
There are so many urgent crises on the verge of spilling over the multitude of rickety, makeshift dams that have been erected to buy more time, that it is simply mind-boggling to me that we are now reaching the point when they could all conceivably breech their containment structures all at once.
The collapsing economy around the world ... the fast-building tensions in the Middle East about to erupt in a war that could quickly engulf the world ... simmering social stresses tearing communities and nations apart ... ballooning governmental police-state mentalities sweeping through all levels of authority ... extreme climate conditions leading to very dangerous food shortages ...
I'm not a Mayan end-of-the-world believer ... the farthest from it. But it's quite the coincidence how our reality is about to be turned absolutely inside out at this particular time, isn't it? God works in mysterious ways.
It's Time
Friends, date-setting is an almost certain way to make an ass of yourself. That said, right now I have to get this off my chest, simply and fully: I don't see us getting to 2013 without going through some very drastic upheavals and convulsions in our current state of global equilibrium. Near term--the next few months--is about to get violently ugly out there, I fear.
I have felt for many years that I was pretty much as prepared as I could be. That's why I have been devoting so much of my time to helping others get ready for crises. I've always remained hopeful that somehow most of us could avoid ever having to actually fall back on our preps, but now, I think perhaps I was naive. And I'm back to doing a number of things right now that I had let slide in my own situation ... moving with urgency on some last-stage preps.
Anyway--it is what it is at this point. All we can do is steel ourselves for what is coming. I encourage all of you to seek God's will for you in prayer and make preparations accordingly.
