It all happened just like I said it wouldn’t.

Esther said, “You need to put screens on the windows because snakes and spiders could come right into the children’s room.”

“Honey, you have a great imagination,” I smiled. “This is the second floor. No snakes or spiders are going to crawl up here. It won’t happen.”
The next morning, I heard Esther scream from the boy’s room, and there was a giant black spider bigger than an Oreo cookie! Courageously, I sucked him up with the vacuum cleaner. To my wife’s credit she never repeated my words, but that spider was big enough that the vaccum made a slurping noise as if it had swallowed a napkin (which sounded to me a whole lot like “It won’t happen.”)

One morning, I looked out the window and saw some men burning brush in the olive grove a stone’s throw from us. They had started a fire right beneath a very important pine tree—important because it was out our window! “Hey!” I called. You are going to start that tree on fire. Move the fire!”

“Olmaz,” they replied, smiling reassuringly. “It can’t be. It won’t happen.” I raced outside in my pajamas and started arguing with them.

With “it won’t happen” even on their lips, suddenly, the tree went up in a blaze! Pines burn in a flash, and those guys were terrified. I salvaged the tree’s life with my garden hose, but one branch and the needles on half the tree were gone. It happened just like they said it wouldn’t.
I sometimes wonder, what will the world be like when the end comes and all those who said, “It won’t,” see that it is? And all who thought He wasn’t find out He was, He is and forever will be? Jesus, help us all.

• Twitter