This is more of The God Show. We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory. The previous post is HERE.
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So on the nature channel of the God Show, the whole earth is filled with God’s separateness (or holiness); the whole earth is filled with people adjusting to God; the whole earth is filled with birth, growth and death. And the whole earth is filled with cycles and rhythms.
Cycles of storms and peace, and life and death.
Thru the nature channel God gives us our basic division of time: The rhythm of days and years. The earth spins once a day and each day has a morning and evening – our life is built around it. A trip around the sun makes a year and each year has seasons – our lives are built around that, too.
There are tornadoes and hurricanes and thunderstorms and blizzards and floods. And calm, beautiful days. In living. there are seasons and times of storms and peace. Sometimes the storms are big. In the middle of one it seems never-ending. But when the storm’s gone, you move on and often forget what it was like. Between storms, especially if it’s a long between, can fool you into thinking the season of storms is over. And it is – for a season.
There are droughts – will it ever be normal again? In the Bible it’s a deer panting for water, a soul panting and thirsting for God, tears as food, taunts of “Where is your God?” and a downcast, disturbed soul within you. And that’s just in one psalm (42).
Nature proves itself stronger than we expect. The Mount St. Helens eruption was supposed to ruin the area for decades. But nature ran riot within a few weeks as plants and animals began returning. The Crepe Myrtles in my backyard were hit by a long, hard freeze a few springs ago and looked dead and black. My brother the landscape expert said we’ll just have to see, they could be goners. Then slowly – pop! – flowers. As long as it was alive it was going to do what a tree does.
Life is resilient. Think back to a time of drought, fire, freezing, death or hopelessness. Most of those episodes you’ve forgotten but at the time you felt they’d never end and life would never be the same. Can’t you now look back, amazed at how some of those were resolved? He restores what the locusts have eaten. Nature is a constant reminder of the power of resurrection life.
Creation also reminds that resurrection life comes after death. Without death, there’s no new life. If you’re alive and following Jesus, you’re always being given over to things that feel like death so that Jesus’ life can be revealed in you (1 Corinthians 4.11). Unless a seed dies to being a seed and falls to the ground, it remains only one seed – but if it dies it produces fruit (John 12.24).
We hate death and failure and confusion and hopelessness. And trees may hate dying leaves in the fall. But the death of the old makes room for the new – there’s no new life without death.
When we see the cycles and rhythms of storms and peace and life and death in nature, it can help us have the right expectations of what life is like. Storms and death are as normal as peace and life.
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The God Show is five channels (in addition to the Bible) that don't change over time or according to culture, where God's ways, invisible attributes, eternal power and divine nature are clearly perceived but often missed: 1. Nature, 2. Authority, 3. Family, 4. Marriage, 5. You. Really, he's all over the place.
You can get caught up HERE or at the link on the right under “other writings.”
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