“Be on guard, so that your hearts will not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day will not come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth. But keep on the alert at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:34-36, NASB)

An apparent strange juxtaposition – black swans and three verses from the Bible. I say ‘apparent’ because there is a link.

Prior to 1697 it was a common expression in Europe to describe something highly improbable, even impossible as about as likely as seeing a ‘black swan’. Exactly how this expression came into usage I’m not sure but there were no swans in Europe that weren’t white so the expression made sense. The earliest written example of it is found in a poem by the second century Roman poet Juvenal. And so things stood until 1697.

What’s the relevance of 1697? Willem de Vlamingh, a Dutch explorer sailed up a river in what the Dutch called New Holland and we now call Australia. He named the river, the Swan river, because he found lots of swans. And they were all BLACK!

This discovery led to the idea of a ‘black swan’ changing from indicating improbability, to being an indication of rarity and unpredictability.

In 2007 Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a Lebanese-American picked up on this change and wrote a book called ‘The Black Swan – the impact of the highly improbable’. He advanced a theory that unpredictable and rare events have strongly impacted history and continue to do so. One relatively recent example would be the attack on the twin towers.

And here’s our link. The verses I quoted talk about the ultimate black swan event – the return to this earth of Jesus Christ. It’ll be a trap if you aren’t expecting it, but the Bible tells you all about that and so much more so there’s no need for it to be unexpected. It’s good news if you know about it. Read God’s Bible and see for yourself!