Springtime and the Faithfulness of God

I haven’t heard anyone expressing any doubts about it. No-one seems to think that spring is only maybe going to come. We’re sure that it’s coming! Soon it will be here in all its glory.

It’s easy to imagine that this is just the way it is; that the cycle of the seasons, like the cycle of day and night, is simply part of the way things are, and that we don’t need to enquire any deeper into the matter. There is a very special reason, however, why the seasons follow one another so utterly invariably, and that is the faithfulness of God our Creator.

Did you know that for their wickedness God once destroyed almost all human beings on the face of the earth? He did so by the waters of a terrible flood. You can read about it in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. It’s the aftermath of that flood that is of particular interest to us. In his great mercy God made a promise. Even though human beings would remain sinful and fill the earth once more with their evil practices (as they most surely have) there would not, for the duration of this world’s history, be a judgment again on such a universal scale. Part of the promise is as follows:

“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” (Genesis 8.22).

From that time forward things would go on in continuous cycles. God committed himself to it. And God has been faithful to that commitment. There is an annual return of the seasons because the God who promised it has kept his word.

Notice, however, the opening words of the promise: “as long as the earth endures”. Does that imply that a time will come when the earth will no longer endure? It most certainly does! God has set a day when he will judge the world by his Son, Jesus Christ.  And when that day dawns, life on this planet as we know it will be forever at an end.

We live, then, between two cataclysms, and whilst as the seasons come and go we get ever further from the first we inevitably draw nearer to the second. In the meantime God is busy. Spring and summer, seedtime and harvest, are great expressions of his goodness. But greater by far is his gospel, which through his church he proclaims to the world. It tells us of Jesus, the only Saviour of sinners. And it makes this golden promise to all who entrust themselves to him: through the coming judgment into eternal life in heaven you will be carried safely.

David Campbell
Grace Baptist Church
777 W North Street
Carlisle, PA 17013