December 2

Seedtime and Harvest

Most of what we begin, we begin more than once. The habit taken up in January and taken up again in March. The conversation with someone we love that went badly and had to be started over, more carefully, on a better day. Beginning is easy enough. Beginning again, when we already know how the last attempt ended, asks something more of us.

The flood story ends with a world that has to begin again. The waters had gone down, the ground had dried, and Noah stepped out onto an earth emptied of nearly everything it once carried. The first thing he did was build an altar and worship.

What God says next is the most surprising line in the story. He promises never again to strike every living thing, and the reason he gives is that the human heart bends toward evil from its youth. Those are close to the words Genesis had already used to account for the flood itself. God begins again with the world knowing exactly what the world is, and the promise rests on his own character rather than on any improvement in ours.

Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasant aroma and said in his heart, "I will not again curse the ground for man's sake, because the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done. While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease."

God said, "This is the token of the covenant I make between me and you and every living creature with you, for perpetual generations: I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it will be a sign of a covenant between me and the earth."

Genesis 8:20-22; 9:12-13

The promise itself is entirely ordinary. Seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night. God's patience with the world takes the shape of a world that keeps its rhythms, steady enough for crops to be planted and for mercy to do its slow work. Every December that arrives on schedule belongs to that promise.

Then God gives a sign and sets it in the cloud. He calls the bow a token of the covenant he makes with Noah and with every living creature, for perpetual generations. Keeping it is God's part. Ours is to look up and know whose sign it is.

God's part reached past the weather. He kept the seasons turning over people who did very little to earn the patience they were given, and his Son was born among them. The God who preserved the world is the God who entered it.

Whatever you have started more than once can be started again in his presence. The sin confessed before and needing confession again. The work of forgiving someone, which has rarely been finished in a single attempt. Today is a good day to begin again. God's patience has outlasted every record of stopping.

Lord, you know what I am, and you have promised mercy anyway. Thank you for a world that keeps its seasons. Where I have stopped, help me begin again today. I will trust the covenant you made.