I love having my expectations bamboozled and enjoy entertaining others afterwards with my amusing stories of confusion, consternation, and bewilderment.
A reflection by Danny Nelson Schweers for January 4, 2026.
Let me tell this story carefully.
In the last hour of the year 2000, my wife and I were driving east. It was 11:30 p.m. or so on December 31 and we were about to cross over the state line from Tennessee into Virginia. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, it was half an hour after midnight. Suddenly it was 12:30 a.m., a new day, a new year! Midnight never happened! The new year was already half an hour old!
We felt cheated. We felt like New Year’s Eve had been stolen from us. We had missed the last half hour of 2000, missed the ball descending in Times Square, missed the moment to kiss and wish each other the best for the coming year. And we had missed the first half hour of 2001. The year had begun without us. It already felt old and used. The confetti was already on the ground and trampled.
Then again, we felt like something special had happened. We felt like time travelers, that we had traveled, not just into a new time zone, but into the Twilight Zone.
As my friend Carl pointed out, travelers coming the other way across that state line would have had a very different experience. They would suddenly be back in the year 2000 after having celebrated midnight half an hour earlier. They would soon have midnight to celebrate all over again. If some police detective asked them where they were at midnight on New Year’s Eve, they could claim some place in Virginia or some place in Tennessee, whichever place gave them the best alibi. They had been two places at once! (Crime writer Dorothy Sayers talks about using such an alibi in her 1932 mystery “Have His Carcase”.)
My challenge at this moment is to somehow tie this story of time travel to something meaningful in terms of my Christian faith and theology.
Perhaps I could say something about how confusion, consternation, and bewilderment can be accepted with grace. Okay. Here goes!
Dementia often attacks people’s short-term memory. Twenty times a day, the demented may ask, “What day is it?” or even “What year is it?” Then, after being told the day or year, they soon forget and once again ask their questions. They have lost their moorings and are adrift in time. Pitiful!
You and I may one day find ourselves adrift in a sea of forgetfulness. Will we be agitated and alarmed and in a panic? My fear is that I will be like a woman I once saw wandering around a nursing home saying, “Somebody help me! Somebody help me!” over and over. No one bothered to help because she was always in a constant state of alarm and no help could be given that would last more than a few minutes at a time.
That could be you or me! But it may not be. My hope is that we will be comfortable with our old friends confusion, consternation, and bewilderment even with our short-term memory in tatters, that we will have made a life-long habit of trusting God and those around us, knowing in our bones that we are in good hands even when we are confused. I have seen that, too, so I know it happens.
Let me end with a prediction for 2026.
I can safely say that confusion, consternation, and bewilderment will be part of the year to come. And I can sincerely pray that you and I will have an unshakeable trust in God and in those around us, even when we find ourselves traveling across the border into the Twilight Zone.
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Reflection 2026-01 by Danny N. Schweers. Danny chairs SsAM’s Communication Committee. He is an active photographer and writer. Click here to visit his website and make a comment.
