FlashForward - part two

Do you remember my blog entry of the 30th September last year? It was about a new SF-based TV show called "FlashForward". It told the story of a mysterious event causing nearly everyone on the planet to simultaneously black out for 137 seconds, during which people see what appear to be visions of their lives approximately six months in the future — a global “flashforward”. Everyone got to see what they would be doing on 29th April 2010. Which is today!

In the 'real world', we don't have the advantage of such hindsight, and therefore many unexpected things have happened in everyone's lives since September 2009. Examples include the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti this past January; the air traffic disruption from volcanic ash from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland in April! To a lesser extent, even 'FlashForward' itself was affected - in December 2009, ABC decided to put the show on hold for a month or two, reportedly to allow the network to air the 2010 Winter Olympics without further interruption. Life can be so unpredictable...

The show has, however, explored a variety of issues concerning the future, and in particular the concepts of fate and destiny. It's revealed that the 'future' that the characters saw presented to them as a 'fait accompli' can in fact be changed.

It's the same with us. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's up to each to us to decide how to live each day. We can each decide what we do - where we go - who we will serve...

FlashForward...

I don't know whether you got a chance to catch the first episode of 'FlashForward' on Monday. Already hailed as 'the next big thing on US telly', it depicts a frightening world where everyone in the world gets a brief glimpse of their own future, six months later. You see, everyone loses consciousness for exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds, during which most people get to see visions of their lives on 29th April 2010. An FBI team from LA are soon hard at work to solve the mystery, led by Stanford Wedeck (Courtney B Vance), Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) and Demetri Noh (John Cho). Benford's contribution is the creation of a database of the visions (known as 'flash-forwards') from around the world. Known as the Mosaic Collective, he saw himself working on this during his own flash-forward. The show is being aired in the States on Thursdays, with us in the UK getting our showing the Monday after.

The premise is an intriguing one - particularly because most of us would be fascinated to know what is going to happen to us, even six months down the line. However, thankfully, we don't have this insight. We don't know what the future holds... but we do know who holds the future. :)

Matthew 6:34 (NIV)
Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.