As Long as the Earth Endures (Genesis 8:22)

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There is something oddly comforting about the rotation of the seasons.

Every summer, when I’m with my kids at the soccer and baseball fields, I crave the cold weather. Every winter, when we’re cooped up inside during those brutal Texas winters (last year it got to 50 F!), I look forward to summer.

(Actually, what I look forward to the most is that five day stretch in between winter and summer known as “spring,” where the weather seems to normalize and we can venture outdoors. Stay out too long and you get scorched, though).

The seasons are dependable. They’re functional. And for Noah, I would argue, they represented peace.

What Noah Saw Leaving the Ark

I can only imagine the types of conversations that Noah and his family had for the year or so they were all on the Ark.

Everything — and everyone — they knew was gone. No animals (outside of the ones living in the stall next to them), and probably a fundamentally changed landscape.

What would they think?

Balance of the Seasons

It was in those moments, as they descended the plank down to the earth, that God told them a worldwide flood would never happen again. God would never “strike down” every living thing as He had done with the flood.

God goes on to talk about the balance He created in nature:

“As long as the earth endures,

Seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,

Summer and winter, and day and night,

Will not cease.”

This is eerily similar to what Solomon talked about in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. There is truly “a time for everything.” If the time isn’t right at this moment for something particular, wait for the right time. It will show up. Be patient.

And take comfort in the fact that until God returns, the seasons will continue as they always have, no matter what the news wants to say otherwise.