A couple of weeks ago, Karen and I packed Gregory, the last of our youngsters, off for his first week at university. It is an exciting time for Gregory, of course, and a poignant one for us parents. It’s the end of an era in our lives, though also the start of another one. It will take us a while to adjust to having a quieter house and cooking meals for two again. As my house group members commented on Tuesday, however, children always boomerang: they come back to you again! It will be several years before we are completely past living the familiar yearly cycle of holidays that has been drummed into us since we were at school ourselves. Gregory will be back home for Christmas, Easter and the summer breaks, and perhaps at other times, when he is missing his mother’s cooking.
Has it ever occurred to you that God designed cycles of time into our universe from its very beginning? In the poetic account of creation that begins our Bibles, we read that on the fourth day, God put “lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night…for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (Genesis 1:14, ESV). Since ancient times, people have used the movements of the sun, moon, stars and planets to calculate when they need to carry out important activities or celebrate religious festivals. Even today, we calculate the date of Easter using the cycles of the sun and moon. Scientists and science fiction writers speculate about whether there is life among the stars, and what strange and wonderful forms it might take. That is well and good. But we know this about the stars for certain: God created them to help us order our lives, so that we can know when to sow and when to reap, when to work and when to rest, when to call upon him for his blessing and when to celebrate his blessings with thanksgiving. The heavens are God’s beautiful and awe-inspiring reminders that mark these seasons of life. What an amazing gift!
This Sunday is our harvest service, our annual celebration of how God has faithfully provided for our needs for another year. He has continued to keep the promise he made to Noah, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22, ESV). In our modern times of global food shipping and refrigeration, we may not be so conscious of the ways that cold and heat, summer and winter govern our food supplies. Many foods are available all year round, and few of us need to sow the fields and harvest their fruit ourselves. Nevertheless, it is good to have this annual opportunity to remember and celebrate God’s goodness towards us in his bountiful creation. Let us gather to give heartfelt thanks to him for his blessings. He gave us the stars to remind us.
Matthew Briggs
Ministry Team