Friends, I believe we have entered a new dawn in history – what I call the red sky days. You know what I mean, I think. When you awake in the morning and step outside to a red sky, a part of you deep inside you knows that something is coming…a storm you may need to prepare for and perhaps shelter from.

This is the era I believe we are entering. The more prescient among us have seen these red sky days coming from a long way off. They have tried to warn us in their music and their art. They have written their 1984s, they have written their V for Vendettas, their Handmaid’s Tales and their Watchmen and such. They have, as best they can, sounded the alarm, gone into the street, rung bells and shouted that a red sky has dawned…we must prepare.

This is difficult. We do not like news that portends endings and strife. We are remarkably capable of blocking out such warnings and rationalizing that the concerns are for others and not ourselves.

But it is getting harder to not look up and see that the skies are now a deep blood red. That the skies portend terrible days ahead.

But things are already bad, you say. Just look around the world. Look at Europe, look at the Middle East, look at the United States…it’s been a long time since things have been as bad as they are now.

You may be right but the times we are in right now, these red sky days, are days of division and preparation for what lies ahead. Oligarchs are gathering power to themselves. This is primarily what is happening all over the world right now, in a way we have not seen. Powerful men (and they are, mostly, men) are consolidating wealth and power. They are conspiring with one-another to restructure long standing systems and rules of engagement to further that gathering of wealth and power.

This is what we are experiencing now…not the storm, but the rising winds ahead of it. Now is the time to change our longstanding habits and prepare for the days to come.

“I’ve been afraid of changing cuz I’ve built my life around you, but time makes you bolder…”

So says Fleetwood Mac and we can relate. Most people do not like change. Change is frightening. Why can’t things remain the same? But that is not the nature of the universe or our lives…entropy is a law. Change happens, whether we like it or not, we can be prepared or not, when it comes.

So things are bad. No doubt. But the real storm will arrive when those currently gathering power are challenged, as they no doubt will be. When this happens, when we seek to re-balance resources and wealth to a more equitable outcome, those who currently hold power will not let it go easily. They will fight back as if they were fighting for their lives. In a way they will be because they have come to define their lives by the power and wealth they hold.

What I’m saying is, and I don’t mean to be bleak, things may be bad…but they will likely get worse before they get better.But we should remember the words of English theologian Thomas Fuller aound 1650 – “It is always darkest just before the day dawneth.” This is the slender, golden thread of hope we can hold onto – that after the storm that is to come, a new light dawns and with it something of a more equitable and just society, a society that we have had to fight for, will arise.

We have now entered a time where good people of conscience can no longer remain silent as powerful men do evil in our midst. We must, at the very least, stand up and make it clear that we see their deeds, we are witnesses, and they will be held accountable. They will be held accountable for their murderous ways, they will be held accountable for their hoarding of wealth and for the great and ever-increasing disparity that is happening right now, in our midst.

Our skies are painted with the blood of unwilling martyrs. People who would much rather have not seen these red sky days. People would have prefered to keep to their own in what joy they could gather to themselves. People like you and I who could echo these wonderful, painful, powerful words of Frodo as written by JRR Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings when he declared in sorrow –

“I wish none of this had happened.” “So do all who live to see such times,” said Gandalf, “but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

It is decision time. The skies are warning us. We will get through the storm to come, but the question remains, what kind of people will we be…what will we do with the time that is given to us? Certainly we must open our ears and listen to the voices that are sounding the alarm…voices like a young, 19-year-old folk singer named Bob Dylan who warned of changing times in 1964…