God said to Noah, “Come out of the ark, you and your wife and your sons and their wives. Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground—so they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.” So Noah came out, together with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. All the animals and all the creatures that move along the ground and all the birds—everything that moves on the earth—came out of the ark, one kind after another. Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The LORD smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease”    (Genesis 8:15-22)

It’s approaching the time of the year when I often prefer to stay out of the north woods.  The Weather Channel is predicting that for the week ahead daytime highs will be in the eighties—which is definitely above average for late May.  That’s more typical of July and August here in Michigan.  In the past few months nature has passed from the great intensity of frozen and suspended animation to the great intensity of reproductive preparation  and is now entering the great intensity of prolific production.  A week of eighty degree temperatures after significant rain will turn the forest into a factory where the natural elemental cycles and energy exchange will be going full bore in unending shifts.

Most of the first bird broods have hatched, and many fledglings are on the wing—like the freckle-breasted young robin I startled when I opened the drapes to the back deck yesterday morning.  It flew off with great confidence in its new-found aviation skill.  What a miracle it seems that this creature was wrapped in a sky-blue egg only a few weeks ago.  Goslings by the score are afloat and afield sporting yellow fluff mottled with predictive gray spots.  The swan pair in the nearby pond is down to just one cygnet after hatching two.  Out of sight, dappled white-tailed deer fawns are gaining their land legs.  Millions of such creatures have come to life, filling the ground, the lawns, the meadows, the woodlands, and the oxygen-rich moist air with life abundant.  Included in the lot are mosquitoes, gnats, bees, yellow jackets, spiders, and—to the north of here—black flies.

And that’s just the fauna.  The flora, of course, is exploding too—creating dense cover and food for these creatures.  In that factory is fresh poison ivy, nettles, wild rose, and hardy brambles—the source of a neat row scars on my upper right thigh caused in a long-ago “Man vs. Wild” rush to scale Caesar’s Head in northwest South Carolina. (You may have also discovered that brambles can root themselves top and bottom to make a good facsimile of barbed wire!)

So heat, humidity, biting bugs, brushy barriers, and keen memories of many poison ivy rashes tend to dampen my enthusiasm for the deep woods in the summer.  Give me open glades, quiet beaches, grassy stream-sides, and placid lakes until the frenzy of summer’s manufactory is moderated in preparation for the tranquility of autumn—about the only lull in the great intensity of the seasons that characterizes our upper Midwest latitudes. [Brambles photo source].

"Peaceable Kingdom" by Edward Hicks

Human adjustment to these natural forces that have gone on for eons according to God’s plan and promise, are a good reminder that He created the natural world we occupy for His pleasure (Revelation 4:11)—but accruing to the benefit of all things living.

It was not just Noah and his family that disembarked and it was not just Noah’s family that received the covenant of blessing. Our accommodating to and adjusting for the rest of His creation has always been and always will be our duty, for, as the apostle Paul reminded us, God the Son will one day—perhaps soon—be reconciling “all things” to God the Father. The gospel is good news for “every creature under heaven” (Colossians 1:19-23).  Therefore we celebrate the great creation, the great preservation, and the coming great restoration along with the natural world: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow/Praise Him all creatures here below!”

[Right click (in Firefox) on the Hicks painting and select "view image" to see it enlarged.  Then click on the back arrow to return to WOC.  Dean's images will be enlarged by left clicking on the photo.]