Love Always Cares and Protects (1)
Scripture Reading — 1 Cor. 13:7a; Genesis 8:15-22
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
God’s love bears all things or holds all things up. God creates, sustains, recreates, and carries the world along to a great and glorious future. This truth shines forth in God’s dealings with Noah.
Because Noah’s world was so full of violence, God, with pain in his heart, decided to punish that world by causing water to flood the earth for a hundred and fifty days, destroying every form of life. Only Noah, his family, and the other forms of life that God commanded him to take into the ark were spared.
Moved by compassion, God promised never again to curse the ground and destroy all living creatures because of sin. Rather, “as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.”
And while bearing up the world, God set in motion a plan to carry away the sinfulness of human beings. Isaiah prophesied of Jesus, “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows….He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4a, 5).
Now Jesus must reign “until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:25-26).
O God, thank you for bearing the world up and carrying away my sins and the sins of the whole world through Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross. Amen.
About the author — Richard E. Williams
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