I was putting up some roof sheeting when I discovered this delightfully tenacious little plant.
As the song goes, “we’ve paved paradise and put up a parking lot”, but these serendipitous signs of life convince me that paradise wins; it has to, it has God on its side.
In our greed and expediency, we have pushed the creation beyond its limits and many think that God does not notice or care.
But the Bible says that God does take the state of the creation very seriously, and creation’s present and future state is tightly woven into His dealings with His people.
In the first books of the Bible, where God is establishing and training His template people (a.k.a the Jews), He instructs them in all aspects of life, including caring for the land.
A severe warning was issued that if they did not carefully follow all God’s ways the land would become defiled and vomit them out (Leviticus 18:28). Moses prophesied that disobedience would lead to exile, during which time the land would then get its needed Sabbath rest, theretofore denied it by His disobedient people (Leviticus 26:34-35).
The Israelites’ 70 years of Babylon captivity shows that God neither lies nor threatens lightly.
In the New Testament, the eager expectation for the full revealing of God’s work of transformation in His children (Romans 8:19) is of a piece with the hope that “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” (Romans 8:21).
This is not a sentimentalized, everyone holds hands and sings Kumbaya promise, for the final prophecies in Revelation do not only talk about the end being a time for restoration and reward, but also a time “for destroying those who destroy the earth.” (Rev 11:18).
