Scripture Daily

Context No. 3803 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 8:18-22: in context

18Noah went out, with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives with him. 19Every animal, every creeping thing, and every bird, whatever moves on the earth, after their families, went out of the ship. 20Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal, and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21The LORD smelled the pleasant aroma. The LORD said in his heart, “I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake because the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth. I will never again strike every living thing, as I have done. 22While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”

The first thing Noah does when he steps out of the ark onto a cleansed earth is build an altar and worship. Before planting, before building a home, before anything else, he offers to God in gratitude for their deliverance.

And God responds with a gracious, sweeping promise: never again will he curse the ground and destroy all life as he has done; while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will not cease. Two things are worth holding here. Noah's instinct to worship first, to make his first act on the new earth an altar of thanksgiving, sets the pattern for a rightly ordered life: God before all else. And the faithfulness of God's promise, which we still live under every day. The regular turning of the seasons, the reliable rhythm of seedtime and harvest, is not mere nature running on its own; it is the standing testimony of a promise God made and keeps. Every sunrise and every harvest is a quiet sign of his covenant faithfulness.

Do I, like Noah, put worship and thanksgiving first, and do I see in the reliable turning of the seasons the faithful keeping of God's own promise?

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