The large scale farmers have harvested their crops and the farmers with smaller operations have already prepared their land for next season. With the winter at hand my wife and I have cleaned out our above ground garden boxes, mulched beds and like others have our land set for the dormant season where a few cold freezes will be an important part of the annual cycle God has established. It’s in this time of year that I find the radiant heat of the sun to be an especially welcome contrast to the cold outside environment.
The power of the sun to penetrate the cold is in fact more than just a “welcome contrast”, I need it – we need it! During many mornings as the sun replaces shadows you can watch the frost magically melt. The thawing is a visual show on that fine line between frozen and barely alive. In some regions the temperature will soon drop even more and stay low. The snow and ice will blanket the ground despite the sun.
Most of us don’t get outdoors for long in these conditions. But when you can, if you’ll be willing, you can see, hear, feel and better understand the slow almost subtle response of the earth to this season. If you’ve never done it, get to where it’s cold and stay in the cold until you can’t stand it, then stay longer – until things get numb if you can! There you can start to #FealTheSeason and appreciate the incomprehensibleness (yeah, that’s a word) of God.
I, like many people, am not a big fan of winter – I don’t like being cold. But, as the Climate Reality Project says, “we need winter.” The cold weather is critically important to the timing of sprouting, budding, growing – the living events of gardening. We’ve all experienced season creep. It’s the “observed changes in the timing of the seasons.” In many parts of the world winter isn’t as long or as cold as it used to be, the snow melts sooner AND the plants and us have to respond. Regardless of what we prefer, remember, and need for our current way of life, winter is changing.
Good news! According to David Biello in a Scientific American article, “seasonal plants, including possibly the world’s important grains, can adapt relatively quickly to climate change”. Further, researchers at MIT now have data that shows that the earth can regulate it’s temperature over millennia. They, not me, find that, “the planet harbors a ‘stabilizing feedback’ mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to pull the climate back from the brink, keeping global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.
I think both of these reports point to a very simple but important truth – a reality that thankfully has great implications for us but should guide how we, as humans – God’s creation, live. The truth is that GOD not man created the heavens and the earth. As the creator, God has the exclusive and ultimate control over the earth.
Our participation can be bad management OR it can and should be good stewardship. Beyond this stewardship – this ‘creation care’, we have the command by God to work the ground and till it. In other words God expects us to be active in the gardening of this planet. To do that well, we need to know God, spiritually feel the season and pursue divine wisdom in our gardening lifestyle.
It’s wrong to misuse the evidence of God’s control to recklessly and lazily be abusive to the home God has given us. Our knowledge, capacity, self-will and yes even the AI we’ve created that may threaten our “superiority” – it all pails and falls short of the glory of God. Humanity is designed to radiate God – nothing more and nothing less. Since we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Jesus gives us the ability to adapt and not just survive but thrive in winter.
Grow deep in Christ,
-Brad Bloom, Publisher
