It must have been quite a joyous day when Noah looked out of that ark and saw that the land was drying, the water receding. But, it was not until God said. "Go out of the ark..." (Genesis 8:15) that Noah and company vacated the big boat. When that was done, Noah built an altar and offered a sacrifice to the Lord which prompted the Creator of the flood to say in his heart, "I will never again curse the ground because of humankind..." (Genesis 8:21) It is the first promise made after the flood and the one we think about every time we see a rainbow in the sky.
Hardly had the first promise been spoken into existence when God made a second one. "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease." (Genesis 8:22) The second promise is the promise of order. In the very beginning of the story of creation found in the earliest verses of Genesis, we see that order came out of chaos and that all of creation was established upon that orderliness. In some ways this promise after Noah came out of the ark is a re-affirmation of what God set in place at the beginning. If anyone wondered what God might do going forward from the flood, this word about order would certainly provide assurance that the order established would always prevail.
We sometimes find ourselves grumbling about the signs that speak of this order set in place by God. In the summer, we long for winter. When we are shivering, we look forward to sweating. But, everything comes as it was created to come, night and darkness, seedtime and harvest. God's plan is utterly dependable. The changing order which we see and experience speaks to us of a God who has created and continues to sustain an order which is life giving. It is an order which has brought us into being and an order which allows us to be blessed by the knowledge that others walk in our footsteps. It is this unchanging and utterly dependable order within the creation which makes these blessings possible.
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