As Long as the Earth Endures

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.

Today, we braved the north wind and planted potatoes.

Earlier this week, the girls and I watched my husband plow and turn up the rich, black dirt of our ever-expanding garden.

Our farmer neighbor also was tilling the soil this past week.

And then planting corn while my girls harvested a nice crop of dandelions.

Amid the upheaval these past two months, it is comforting to remember that this cycle of planting and harvesting remains unshaken.

Winter turns to spring, and spring to summer. Rain falls, and the sun appears again, because a kind God has promised to sustain us.

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease (Genesis 8:22). 

This passage came to mind watching my husband plow, but I didn’t remember the context. Today, I looked it up. The full account is sobering. God spoke this promise to Noah when his family and all animals were finally able to leave the ark. God had just destroyed the world because its inhabitants were so violent, so self-seeking, and so thorough in pushing God out of their lives. And God wasn’t assuring us that He would keep our world running because basic human nature had now changed for the better–in the verse just prior, God makes that clear.

His promise is not conditioned on any actions or attitudes of ours. He makes and keeps the promise only because He is kind and faithful.

Our set times of planting and harvesting will remain…as long as the earth endures. The earth will not endure forever. Our world has an end date, known only to God.

This time while we are on earth, while I am on earth, while my girls are on earth, is not a time to make ourselves as comfortable as possible, and then get completely bent out of shape when the routines and expectations we’ve built are upended. This is our time to come to know the God who makes the sun shine and the rain fall, crops spring up and little girls grow, and can even transform a weedy lawn into a thing of beauty on a cloudless May day.

He wants us to know Him…He gave us the Bible so we would. He wants my girls to grow up understanding that this world — with its viruses, weeds, abuses and uncertanties–is not their true home. Their true home is Heaven. Jesus earned it for them when He lived a perfectly unselfish and honest life in our place, and died on the cross to pay for all our actions and attitudes that pushed God out, hurt others and damaged our world.

He will keep sending us day and night, summer and winter, planting and harvest,

in love allowing us time…time to know our God and to teach our children about Him, their Father who sustains them and us in this fallen world and provides a perfect home in the next.